


Freefall

by oxymoronic



Category: Inception (2010), Mission: Impossible (Movies), Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)
Genre: Chaptered, Crossover, Established Relationship, Long, M/M, Original Character(s), Prompt Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-20
Updated: 2012-04-20
Packaged: 2017-11-04 00:37:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 37,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/387711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxymoronic/pseuds/oxymoronic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When William Brandt's world is ripped from under him by an old adversary, he turns to his brother Arthur for aid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tigriswolf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tigriswolf/gifts).



> Written for [this](http://ghotocol-kink.livejournal.com/1494.html?thread=53462#t53462) prompt over at ghotocol_kink: William Brandt is Arthur's older brother. Either one of Arthur's jobs goes badly, or Brandt gets betrayed, and they end up going to each other for help. ~~Yes, I did just write 38k for a kink meme prompt. Yes, I am utterly ridiculous.~~
> 
> Richardson and Alex are mine; I'd dreamcast Benedict Cumberbatch as the former, and Rashida Jones as the latter. There are a couple of geeky references hidden in there; kudos to those who spot them!
> 
> Huge, huge thanks go to all of those who've kept me going on this over the last few months, you've all been wonderful. Special thanks have to go to StarlingGirl for the beta, despite the fact she's never seen the damn film.

_VIRGINIA_

Will wakes to the touch of a hand, curving soft lines against the ebb and swell of his back. Long fingers, thick calluses, fingernails bitten to the quick. Ethan’s hand.

“Good morning,” Ethan says, feeling him stir, a smile in his voice.

Will groans into the pillow. “If that clock’s not in double-digits I am _not_ interested, Hunt. It’s a Saturday. Even the IMF gets a goddamn break on a goddamn _Saturday_.”

“It’s 11:03,” Ethan protests mildly, his hand still idly wandering.

Will sighs, shoves the pillow away and pushes himself upright, casting him a baleful glare. “The fuck have you been doing since 5 a.m. anyway?”

“I woke you up?”

“You _always_ wake me up, asshole.”

Will lies back against the headboard, yawning hugely and pushing some of the sleep from his eyes with the crux of his hand. “I went for a run,” Ethan says, catching hold of Will’s other hand. “And we needed milk,” he adds, a little softer than before.

There’s a tone there Will knows too well. “We needed milk or _we needed milk_?” he asks; he can tell Ethan knows what he means by the taut snap of his jaw, the tension in the lines around his eyes. Ethan nods once.

“Both, actually.” He places a slim black smartphone on the table beside the bed. “I’ve already watched mine.”

Will looks across at it, the press of Ethan’s fingers warm against his own. _We could just not_ , he wants to say. They’re meant to be driving to Richmond today to visit Ethan’s mother; Will’s meant to be redecorating the hall tomorrow; they’re hardly the only team the IMF has at its beck and call. But he can tell from the set of Ethan’s shoulders and a grimness in his eye that he’s already long resolved to go, and Will’s spent too many nights ripped of sleep, staring blind at the floor, heart in his mouth at every buzz of the phone – there’s a reason they’re inseparable in the field nowadays. Will can no longer let him go alone. He reaches over, picks up the phone, and lets it play.

 _Matthew Johnson_ , it tells him; _birthplace Manchester, England; third from Cambridge, graduated 1993; made his fortune in importing expensive produce from India into Europe and the United States. Suspected of fraud by separate branches of the C.I.A., F.B.I. and M.I.6., but no conviction stands. Has subsequently become involved with trading British and American secrets with extremists._

_Recent intelligence suggests he intends to purchase the quantity and location of American submarine dispersals in the next quarter, with plans to sell this information on to the highest bidder. He meets with Ivaniš Jovanović, a known arms dealer with widespread criminal connections, at his holiday residence in Kraljevica in three days. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to intercept this transaction and to replace and destroy the master copies of any and all damaging information Johnson may possess. As always, any detection will lead to the subsequent disavowal of any and all team members whose anonymity is compromised. This message will self-destruct in five seconds._

He flicks the phone away as the memory card sizzles and dies in an acrid _snap_ of burning plastic, and stares blankly at his hands. “Croatia,” he says, voice quiet and a little rough.

Ethan’s hand tightens briefly. “Nothing happened in Croatia,” he reminds him softly, but Will can’t help the knot of disquiet in his gut; he nods absently, but doesn’t move his eyes from his hands. There’s something not quite right about it; something out of his sight, locked down in the basest part of his brain, setting his guts and the nerves of his teeth on edge and telling him _he should not go_.

He lets out a long, slow breath. “I don’t like it,” he admits, tone tight and terse.

Ethan frowns at him, nonplussed. “How come?”

He sighs, shakes his head. “Just a hunch.” He can’t let Ethan go out there alone because of a hunch. “You ring your mother,” he says, finally. “I’ll pack. When do we fly out?”

A grin bursts across Ethan’s face, huge and bright, and he’s such a _child_ sometimes. “16:00 hours, and I packed while you were sleeping.” He reaches over and catches the back of Will’s head with his hand; kisses him long and slow and deep. “You’re far too predictable,” he murmurs, smile obscene, keeping their heads pressed close even when he breaks away.

“Only when it’s you,” Will amends quietly when he leans in again, but somehow even Ethan’s warm, steady hands against his waist can’t dissipate the hot nest of fear tangled up inside him.

Ethan nudges him back with the tips of his fingers, folds his nose in an exaggerated wrinkle. “You smell like my ass, Brandt,” he murmurs, still grinning. “I’m not taking you anywhere like that.”

Will sends an ill-judged slap at the top of Ethan’s head and drags himself into their shower, dropping his loose, butter-soft shirt and shorts on the cool, hard tiles. He waits until it builds up to as hot as he can stand and then steps beneath the spray, lets it fall hot and hard against the back of his neck, tries to drive some of his jitters away. Croatia is meaningless, he tells himself; he thinks of Julia, safe in Seattle. He thinks of his team, and how proud he is of them, how often they’ve had his back.

Ethan snags him en route back to their room, towel-clad and still a little damp. He hustles Will up against the wall, and though Will makes a show of trying to escape once he traps him there with a hand on each side and kisses him, hot and soft and slow, Will’s perfectly happy to stay right where he is. “Better?” he murmurs once Ethan pulls away.

“Much,” is his reply, thumbing idly at the soft skin that rests at Will’s wrists. His eyes, however, are locked on the leather cord that lies ever-present around Will’s neck, the dull silver coin that rests in the crux of his collarbones; Will’s gut squirms, and he tries to avoid catching his gaze, tries to distract him with a small, quick shift of his hips, a half-hearted attempt to escape. So far, Ethan has never asked, and honestly Will should credit him for it; but his gaze has never been far away, especially at moments like these.

“Ethan,” Will says quietly, tensing his arms gently beneath Ethan’s grip. It’s hardly a great danger to him; he could flip him off and break free as easy as breathing, but it’s so very far from what he wants to do.

Ethan ignores him. “The man who gave you this. Will you tell me his name?” he asks, tone cool, and fuck, there’s a reason why the guy has been amongst their best ranking field operatives for the last ten years.

Will swallows, his throat suddenly more than a little tight. “Arthur,” he replies, trying to keep his voice calm. He smiles slowly, dirtily, bucks his hips in a different way, tries to divert his attention. “He’s not competition, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Ethan lets him go. The cool air of the hallway seems to press up against him, work into the vacuum where Ethan’s hands had lain moments before. “We should hit the road in fifteen,” he says, tone dangerously nonchalant. “We can grab lunch at the airport before we leave.”

Will watches him go, his hand at his throat, his thumb tracing the press of the leather against his neck. He’s got no one but himself to blame; he should have told Ethan a long time ago, should have expected him to snap long before now – but the idea of Ethan knowing what he was, what he might have been, chills him to the bone. He sucks in a breath through his teeth, the steady jangling of his nerves back in full force. Get the mission done, he thinks, and then he’ll tell him all.

 

 

 

 

Will’s utterly unsurprised to find Jane booked into a seat two aisles behind them. He stumbles into her in a cheap airport café as he decides to reintroduce his brain to caffeine; Ethan’s wandered off to buy four million packs of batteries or accost the pilot about landing procedures or deal with whatever little niggle has made him paranoid this time. “Benji’s meeting us there,” she supplements with a smile after they exchange hugs. “He’s back with his parents in London for the week.”

“How’s Chicago?”

She pulls a face. “Cold, and way too far from Virginia for my liking, but I’ll probably be back by the new year.” She pauses for a moment, looking almost nervous, which Will finds amusing from a woman who’s capable of incapacitating grown men more efficiently than most Marines. “And how is everything?”

He grins as he catches sight of Ethan heading their way, conspicuously inconspicuous in his dark hoodie and jeans against the brightly-dressed, bustling crowd, an overwhelming surge of something that makes his stomach sweep. “Everything’s good, actually. Really good.”

“Okay,” she replies, relaxing slightly, and smiles at him in return. “So long as everything’s good.”

The flight is long and dull and typical, with unappetising food, shrieking children and too-soft seats. They’re used to flying private; usually the IMF shells out to transport them around the place at least, but with Johnson landing in Croatia in a matter of days they daren’t be so conspicuous. They are allocated a more elaborate hotel when they arrive, but mainly for the view it affords over Johnson’s sprawling, expensive villa, clinging to the very lip of the coastline, more hanging into open air than squatting on solid ground.

On arrival, Will takes up occupation in the crow’s nest, as it were, perched on the balcony with what essentially constitute sophisticated binoculars pressed against his face, attempting to get some further lowdown on the layout of the property than the already excessive blueprints Benji’s acquiring for them in the room below. Will’s always been a sucker for accuracy, and sometimes he prefers a little old-fashioned surveillance to Benji’s dubious findings from Wikipedia. As far as he can tell, there’s nothing particularly mysterious about the place; four walls, a roof, a maelstrom of panicking servants trying to get the place ready for their master’s arrival. He can’t imagine Johnson visits it more than once a year at least. He sighs, straightens up and rolls the crook out of his neck. The light’s fading, the sky filled to bulging with the colour of honeysuckle and lavender; he needs food, and rest, but most of all he very much needs not to be in Croatia.

As he turns to go back inside, he’s stopped by steady hands about his waist and a quick press of lips to the nape of his neck. “Thought I’d watch the sunset,” Ethan says, moving to stand beside him, arms fanned out across the rail. “I’d never seen anything like it before I came here.” He stays silent for a while, and Will allows himself the view, the first lick of evening breeze against his forearms, his shirt cuffs trapped up about his elbows, the thick fragrance of fruit in the air from the garden below. “I’m sorry you’ve had to come back,” Ethan says quietly, glancing his way. “It’s not something I wanted for you.”

Will shrugs. “It’s fine,” he lies, glancing back across at Johnson’s villa. “No tall buildings, no helicopters, nothing ridiculously insane for you to throw yourself off of or into the path of or in front of or – ”

“I get it,” Ethan says, mouth caught in a small quirk.

“Just an intel grab, in and out, and then home again.”

“Simple,” Ethan agrees morosely, and Will sighs and shakes his head, chuckling under his breath at the gloominess in his voice. “My mother still wants to meet you, by the way,” he adds, and the sentence pulls Will’s chest a little tight.

“When we get back I’ll cook her dinner,” Will promises. “Awkward family interactions are my specialty.”

By now the light has almost faded, but he still catches the look of warm amusement on Ethan’s face, of unreserved affection. It’s not the first time he’s wished he could throw the job away just for this, but it’s stronger than it’s been in a while; Ethan’s face lit up against the skyline, free and unafraid. It’s not an option, though; it never has been. He knows Ethan couldn’t live without it. He allows himself a sigh, long and deep, tries to push out all his fears with it.

“I’ll take first shift,” Ethan says quietly. “You go get your head down for a while.”

Will nods. “But no staying up all night, and no – no abseiling, or parachuting, or hang-gliding, or – ”

“ – anything that involves death-defying leaps?” Ethan interrupts, grinning.

“Exactly,” Will replies, dryly. “Just surveillance.”

“I’ll try. Goodnight,” he adds, and pulls Will in for another kiss before he lets him go.

 

 

 

 

“In the van,” Will repeats, tone deadpan, expression incredulous. “You want me to stay with Benji in the _van_?”

Johnson is throwing the most ridiculously extravagant homecoming party Will has ever had the displeasure of observing, and that’s including Mumbai. Their intel suggests that the operation is largely to cover the drop with Jovanović, which means they need to be inside with their eyes on the prize all evening; Ethan bagged a job in the kitchens, whilst Jane wrangled an invite by flirting outrageously with Johnson over a busted engine the afternoon before; playboy millionaires always tend to have something in common, although Will’s still waiting for the day when it’s his turn. For now, apparently, he gets to chill in the van with Benji.

“Hey, don’t diss the van,” Benji says, raising his hands. “The van is cool.”

“First,” he says, jabbing his finger at Benji, “you are _never_ allowed to say the word diss again, and secondly,” he continues, switching to Ethan, “there is no way in hell I am letting you go in that building on your own, not with half of the European underworld – ”

Ethan looks at him, eyebrow raised. “I’m not on my own, I’m taking Jane in with me. We need you out here to cover our asses in case Jovanović – or Johnson for that matter – makes a run for it. If he gets out of our sight tonight he could be halfway across Europe before we find him again.”

He knows he should bite his tongue, that what Ethan is saying makes sense, but still – Will shakes his head, knots his fingers together. “Ethan, I seriously think – ”

“Drop it, Brandt,” Ethan snaps, already on his feet, eyes on the door.

Will sits back, shoulders taut, lips tightened halfway to a snarl. _Brandt?_ he thinks viciously, and Ethan knows it; he can’t catch his eye. “Fine,” Will mutters, all too aware he sounds like a kid.

“Fine,” Ethan echoes, rolling his eyes, reaching down to his belt to flick on his comms unit; the others follow his lead. “I’ll see you at 01:00 hours. If anything goes wrong, we reassemble at rendezvous Delta at 06:00. Comms check?”

“Friar.”

“Littlejohn.”

“Marion.”

“And Robin. We’re good. Marion, with me.”

He sends Will a final, tight look, licked with fury and the promise of an argument later, and the air in the room sits tight in Will’s throat. He should just let Ethan go, get the mission done, like he has a thousand times before, but the knots in his gut seem to tighten at the thought – he starts after them, wanting to say – _something_ , but by the time he hits the corridor they’re already halfway down the hall; he gets a flash of Ethan’s expensive suit through the elevator door, and then nothing. Will stalks back into their room, scouring his face with his hand and letting loose a long, deep breath, tight between his teeth.

“Blimey, Will,” Benji says, “what the fuck was that about?”

Will shakes his head. He can feel his hands shaking – for fuck’s sake, he has to _focus_. “C’mon, let’s get packed up.”

The size of computer chips being what they are these days, trying to pinpoint the info exchange itself would be almost impossible; luckily, Johnson has done them a great favour in that respect by making it blindingly obvious. (“So overt it’s covert,” Benji had quipped, and then giggled to himself like a schoolkid.) As part of the homecoming celebrations, each guest is politely required to present a gift to the host, a requirement one could only make when amongst certain higher echelons of the rich – and Jovanović happens to have recently acquired for a sum more than Will’s quarterly paycheck ten times over a golden tiara with a gaudy, bright blue diamond the size of his fist and, at Benji’s best guess, the microchip secreted into the rim.

Their best chance of success comes after the handover but before Johnson has time to check Jovanović has come through; Ethan, therefore, has to undergo the usual gymnastics to get into the vault, get out the tiara, switch the chip for a dud, put it back, and get the hell out of there before Johnson decides to show it off, while Jane keeps an eye on the two of them and does her level best to distract or incapacitate them should he decide to bring it out ahead of schedule.

And Will stays in the van. As backup.

“Have you ever noticed a pattern with his codenames?” Will grouses, lounging across a chair in the back of the van, one foot on Benji’s swivel-chair to knock him around whenever he feels like he isn’t listening. “He gets Team Leader and Jupiter and Robin Hood, and we end up with – ”

 _“Comms clean, Littlejohn,”_ Ethan snaps in a crackle of static, and Benji sniggers.

Will shrugs, grinning. “See what I mean?”

Ethan ignores him. _“Marion, are you in position?”_

 _“Arriving now. I have eyes on the Prince.”_ Will and Benji watch through Jane’s eyes as she steps through the high, white-pillared entrance to the villa, and is greeted instantly by Johnson, smiling broadly at her arm.

 _“My dear, you look stunning,”_ he murmurs, and his hand disappears from Jane’s sight. Will had said much the same in the hotel room not ten minutes ago, but hearing it from this asshole’s mouth makes him want to punch him.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Will mutters, scowling. “You’re totally welcome to this one.”

 _“But where’s my present?”_ Johnson continues, mouth curved into a pout. _“And where on earth are you keeping it in that thing?”_

Jane glances around, attempts to look shy and private, and leans in. _“It’s not something I can show you here,”_ she whispers. _“Maybe later.”_

Johnson’s face slides into a leer. _“Definitely later. And for now, a drink?”_

_“Perfect. Lead the way.”_

“What a twat,” Benji mutters, sidelining her feed to bring up Ethan’s. “Robin, what’s your progress?”

_“On vault level. Following the Sherriff en route with the prize.”_

“Buzz me when you arrive and I’ll guide you through.” Benji settles back in his chair and grins. “And now we wait.”

“And now we wait,” Will echoes, sighing, and scours his face. Every part of him feels edgy, jumpy, like there’s grit under his nails and he can’t shake it free.

“We could play a game if you like,” Benji suggests, who’s settled into surveillance with the comfort of routine. “I’m sure I have a pack of cards somewhere... or did I use them to glue that toaster back together? Well, there’s always the classics – charades, Twister, I-Spy – ”

“I-Spy,” Will repeats, deadpan. “We’re in a van, Benji, in case you hadn’t noticed. You seriously think we can play _I-Spy_ – ”

They both hear it at once. A harsh, glottal sound, a choking of breath, a distinct thud of flesh. A sound Will knows from experience means someone just got hit across the neck and is now lying unconscious on the floor.

And one by one, the screens drop out to crackling black.

Benji’s on the comms in a heartbeat. “Robin, report – Marion, report in now, we have lost visuals, _Christ_ – ” Nothing, nothing but static on every line – Will has his foot on the door already, kicking it open and swinging himself out. “Where the fuck are you going?! If they’re down, the regs say we have to – ”

“Fuck the regs, Benji! Get yourself out and to the rendezvous point and I’ll meet you there. _Go!_ ”

Will’s launched into a sprint before he has time to check whether Benji’s followed through. They’re parked a block and a half away downhill in the wrong direction – _fuck_ , too far, too far to run – and all he can think of is _Ethan_ , _Jane_ , sprawling on some godforsaken rich boy’s linoleum, dead, maybe dead, possibly dead, _please don’t be dead_ , _fuck_ , please –

He hurtles through the front door, nearly tripping up over his own feet, gun in hand, scouring the area. It’s empty. The huge, gaudily-decorated entrance, with its stupid fountain, wall-to-wall bar, parquet floor, cream-coloured gold-embossed wallpaper which had, no more than two minutes ago, been teeming with guests, is completely, utterly, fucking _empty_.

“You took your time,” says a voice from behind, and it’s the last Will hears before the prick of the needle in his neck.

 

 

 

 

Will wakes to the touch of cold concrete against his skin and Johnson’s severed head lying at his feet.

He closes his eyes in a heavy, forced blink, forces them to focus. No, not his head – more like skin, strips of skin, with eyeless sockets and thick, plastic hair –

A mask. Johnson was wearing a mask.

Every bone in his body goes ice-cold.

“And finally, he gets it,” says a voice from behind him, same as before. He can’t crane to see who; he’s cuffed to a thick, metal chair, bolted securely into the concrete. There is a moment of sharp panic when he realises the clothes he wears are not his own – but his totem still rests against his chest, a warm, familiar weight. He registers music on the periphery of his hearing; Piaf. “You’re a difficult man to find, William Brandt.” The music stops at its most raucous with a sharp _klik_ from behind; light footfalls anticipate the slow movement of the man to stand in front of him. “Arthur still uses it, you know. Careless. He’s always had his habits.”

Will bites back a snarl, keeps himself calm, closes his eyes. _Fuck_ , he hasn’t heard from Arthur in months, can’t remember the last time he spoke to him – it’s not unusual, it hadn’t worried him ‘til now, but suddenly there’s hot, tight fear gnawing at his insides. The man moves into view – tall, cropped blond hair, sickly pale skin pulled taut over his skeletal face, thick white scar slashing painfully close below his right eye across his jutting cheekbone – and every one of Will’s worst fears is realised.

Anthony Richardson.

“Ahh,” Richardson says languidly with a smile. “So you _do_ remember me. Excellent.”

Will says nothing; he can’t form words around the lump of terror in his chest. Richardson’s smile lengthens, and he reaches for the remote balanced on Will’s lap to punch on a viewscreen embedded in the opposite wall. It takes a moment for Will to register what he’s seeing – the perspective is odd somehow, the image scrambled – and then he realises it’s the view from an eye-lens. From Jane’s lens. He resists the urge to buck against the cuffs, notices with desperate urgency that according to the automated stats display on the right-hand side she’s fine, a little freaked and probably a little bruised but _fine_. She’s only just woken up; she’s scanning the room, testing her restraints, feeling for damage in her own bones.

They both notice at the same time she’s not alone; Ethan is beside her, still unconscious, mouth gagged, slumped in his chair, a tender stripe across his throat already bubbling up into a bruise, and the sight kicks Will’s pulse up to a low, loud roar. His eyes flick to Richardson, watching him from across the room, the same goddamn grin still twisting his face. Will swallows thickly, takes a deep breath, waits for the next move.

He feels Jane tense as the heavy, rusted door clicks open across the room and a man enters, gun in hand. Will’s stomach tightens, a thousand threats simmering at the top of his mind, but he says none of them – he keeps his eyes trained on the screen, tries to identify the assailant, gather what he can, think of how to help neutralise the threat with something, _anything_. He tries to drown out the small, quiet voice reminding him he’s useless, useless, fucking _useless_ , cuffed and pinned down behind a viewscreen, might as well be a thousand miles away. The man with the gun steps into the light, and Will has to choke back on a gasp as he watches _himself_ cross the room, mind reeling in a downwards spiral of _what the fuck – ?_

Then he presses the gun to Ethan’s forehead and pulls the trigger.

Will doesn’t even know he’s screaming until he feels the hoarse rip of his own throat. His ears ring in the silence. Metal bites coldly against his arms and feet, slicing through the skin.

The viewscreen is dark. Richardson crosses the room and drops the keys to his cuffs into his lap. “That has just broadcast live to every screen in the IMF,” he says quietly into Will’s ear; his voice seems painfully loud and jarring. “So if I were you, William Brandt, I’d _run_.”

It takes him less than a minute to undo the cuffs, kick open the door and reach the street beyond. There’s no one in sight.

Will takes a look at the empty sky, flooding with the light of the new day. He runs.

 

 

 

 

He reaches the rendezvous with the new morning, the thin light acrid and sharp against his aching eyes. He kicks the door down; he had a key, but they had taken his clothes and everything besides. They hadn’t even given him shoes, and his feet throb and bleed thickly onto the slippery floor beneath him.

It’s empty. He doesn’t take the time to check whether Benji’s been; two steps through the threshold and he’s on his knees, forehead against the rough linoleum, curled as tight as he can go as the shock and terror spikes through him in vicious waves, leaves him shuddering on the floor. He stays there for longer than he knows, concentrating on the impossible pull and release of each and every breath.

It wasn’t Ethan. It wasn’t.

It can’t have been.

The next solid, _real_ thing he knows is the butt of a gun jabbing into the crux of his neck. “Up,” a voice says, thick and distant as if underwater, and he registers it dimly, kicks his melted, aching muscles into action, hauls himself onto his stinging feet. “Hands against the wall.”

 _Benji_ , he realises, and drags his mind up from down below, flicks the switch on the deepest, most basic part of his brain. He listens hard, but only hears their breathing, no sound of footsteps outside the door, no crackle of mikes, no whirr of helicopter blades slicing the air. “Did you call me in?” he asks, and he has to clear his throat and say it twice; his voice is wrecked, rough and raw.

“No,” Benji says softly. “Jane’s gone, I think they cas-evac’d her at dawn. Will, I saw the video.”

His throat tangles around the words, thick and tight and heavy. “I didn’t – it wasn’t – ”

“ _Christ_ , Will, I know, I know,” Benji interrupts, and sighs, dropping down to slide the gun along the floor; it hits the lintel across the room with a soft sound. Will turns around, leans back heavily against the cracked, crumbling plaster. “Masks,” Benji says softly, tone as heavy as lead. “Was Ethan – ?”

Will shakes his head once; neither yes or no, just a weary gesture. “I don’t know.”

Benji looks at him, long and hard. “It’s not just that you’ve been disavowed, Will. They think you’ve gone rogue. The entire IMF has turned into a hit squad looking for you. Will, what are you going to do?”

Will shudders out a sigh, scours his face with his hands. “I have an idea,” he says slowly, staring at the floor. “Someone who might be able to help. But it’s not – it’s not strictly speaking _legal_ , so if you don’t – ”

“I’m with you,” Benji says quietly. “Just tell me what you need.”

Will feels a grateful smile pull at the edge of his mouth, and something slackens in his chest, as if some greater tension has been lessened. “For starters, I’m gonna need your cellphone.”

 

 

_ZAGREB_

 

 

Arthur stands in the warm shadows opposite a tourist’s café, fingers tattooing a rhythm on his wrist, eyes on the time shown by his cheap watch. Will’s inside; he knows this for sure, watched him cross the threshold not five minutes ago, but Arthur’s stuck standing here ‘til he gets the signal.

He’d been with Eames in Mombasa when he’d got the call. Not from Will directly, of course, his brother isn’t an idiot; no, a friend of a friend of a friend enunciated a string of seemingly gibberish numbers and consonants on a crackly, other-side-of-the-world type cellphone line. Translated, Arthur read _emergency, Croatia, myself + tourist_.

He left the same afternoon. He knows Will, and he isn’t the kind of guy to claim an emergency lightly.

Arthur has bolt-holes in practically every city, and those few he doesn’t, Eames does. He’s been to Croatia once before, but that was down at the coastline, working a job for an elderly heiress; they’re further inland, at the capital, the heart of the tourist’s quarter. It’s busy, the height of summer season; the ebb and flow of the crowd seems normal, but their exposure is setting his teeth on edge.

 _Finally_ , Will emerges from the café, coffee in hand and tourist in tow. He takes a minute to look the latter over; British, he’d guess from the complexion, obviously a field operative but not a natural build for it; technician, maybe. Arthur steps from the shadow, and Will notices him within moments. _Safehouse three blocks east_ , Arthur signals. _64_. He pauses, trying to work how to signal ‘Eames’, and settles for _friend_.

 _Understood_ , Will replies, and leans in to speak to his companion.

Arthur takes the longest route home he can devise, chops and changes half a dozen times, covers all points of the compass through alleys and along highways, making sure he loses any tail, trusting Will to do the same. By the time he reaches their safehouse the others are already inside; he can hear Eames making cheerful conversation with Will’s companion (he was obviously right about the British thing), but Will’s his priority.

He finds his brother leaning against the living-room window, gaze caught in the rough mess of scrubland which Eames’ estate agent had optimistically called a garden. Will grabs hold of him the second he gets him in his sights, tugs him towards him and hugs harder than Arthur can remember him doing for a long time. “You’re safe,” Will says quietly; his voice is shockingly hoarse. “I haven’t checked up on you – ”

“We’re okay,” Arthur promises. “We’ve not even taken any rough jobs for a while.” He takes a moment to study his brother, and he’s not exactly comforted by what he sees; tight shoulders, glazed eyes, mouth in a thin line. Arthur had known it must be bad, but to see him like this hits him hard. “What happened?”

Will sighs, long and slow, scours his face with his hand. “It’s Richardson,” he says eventually, and Arthur’s heart stops. “He’s got Ethan.”


	2. Chapter 2

“Anthony John Richardson,” Arthur says, fingers wrapped around a whiteboard pen and his eyes scanning his semi-attentive audience. “Born in London, 1973, to parents Julia and Graham, far too much money and some nasty criminal inclinations, and in the summer of 2001 he was the last job Will and I ever worked.”

Benji scowls across at Will. “You never told me you were into dream-sharing,” he mutters petulantly. “I’d _kill_ to get my hands on that tech.”

The corner of Will’s mouth twitches in a small smile. “There’s a reason it’s illegal, Benji. And besides, it was a long time ago.”

“What was the job?” Eames interrupts; Arthur’s surprised to see him concentrating.

“Difficult,” Arthur replies, shrugging. “But he knew we were the best.”

“The National Bank of Morocco,” Will clarifies quietly.

Arthur allows himself a small grin at the sight of Eames’ jaw dropping toward the floor. “You _didn’t_ ,” Eames breathes.

Benji gapes at the two of them, flabbergasted. “It’s – ”

“Impossible,” Will finishes tersely in a tired monotone.

“Yes, but I’m talking properly impossible,” Benji rolls on, still shaking his head. “ _Ethan Hunt_ impossible. I work for the IMF, I _know_ impossible – ”

“We know, Benji,” Will interrupts, smiling slightly.

“So did you do it?!”

“We took the job,” Will continues slowly. “And you’re right. It was impossible. But we – Arthur – realised pretty early on we didn’t... actually _have_ to break into the vault.”

“Oh, _Arthur_ ,” Eames groans, shaking his head. “Tell me you didn’t.”

Benji frowns. “Didn’t what?”

“We put him under,” Will continues, eyes on the floor. “Arthur worked architect, I worked forger. We reconstructed Morocco, broke into the vault in his mind, and he woke up in his hotel room an hour later convinced it had actually happened. Paid us on the spot. Arthur and I went underground, and three months later I joined the IMF.” He shrugs a single shoulder. “That was the end of it.”

“But it wasn’t, was it?” Eames asks softly, eyes narrowed. “You took something from him.”

Benji’s frown deepens, and he looks between the three of them, mouth slack. “Okay, you’ve lost me again.”

“Well, that’s how dream-sharing works, right?” Arthur says, glancing across at him. “You put someone under, build... a safe, a bank, a vault – ”

“ – and they fill it with their secrets,” Benji finishes, lines in his forehead slackening. “What did you take?”

“Everything,” Will answers quietly. “Associates, bank details, clients, employers, the lot. We bankrupted him.”

“You eviscerated him,” Eames corrects, surprised. “I’m actually impressed.” He leans back in his squeaky plastic chair, kicks his feet up onto the faux-wood coffee table. “And now he’s doing the same to you.”

Will scours his face with his hand, eyes on the pale-patterned carpet under his feet. “It’s been years,” he continues, muttering. “I didn’t think he’d find me. I didn’t think he’d take – ” His voice chokes, catches on the name, turns hoarse and rough and he cuts off to huff out a deep, harsh breath, hands caught up in hot fists by his sides.

Arthur sends Eames a dark look. “We’ll get him back,” he promises, voice steady, caught between the urge to hug his brother and punch Eames squarely in the jaw.

“Well, we know where he’ll have taken Ethan, at least,” Benji says, sounding a little nervous, fully aware he’s teetering on the gulf of family politics. “It’s obvious.”

“Morocco,” Eames adds, nodding in agreement. “He’ll make you break in to the bank to make a point. Which, of course, means the whole thing is a massive trap and you should be running as fast as you can in the opposite direction. We won’t even know whether he’s actually keeping Hunt there until it’s too late and the IMF are kicking our heads in.”

Will shrugs. “If it’s a trap, Richardson will be waiting in Morocco for us to spring it. It’s somewhere to start. I’m willing to bet he’ll have Ethan somewhere nearby.”

Benji grins. “Morocco it is, then! And, well, if all we have to do is break into the world’s most secure bank vault then hey, ‘impossible’ is actually in my job description.”

 

 

 

 

Eames tails Arthur into the kitchen once they’ve broken up, watches him fuss with the burbling coffee-pot and the piece of shit kettle which rocks alarmingly on its plastic holder. He accepts his piping tea in grateful silence and stands there with him for a while, sharing the space, content. “You do realise you’re making a pretty big assumption here,” Eames says finally, setting his empty mug down on the counter.

Arthur nods. “That he’s kept Ethan alive,” he replies, and sighs. “I know it’s a big risk to take, but – imagine if you assume the worst, and then find out he’s alive and trapped someplace – ” He cuts himself off, shaking his head. “You’d do the same for me.”

Eames looks up at him slowly, eyes dark. “I’d rip the world apart to find you,” he amends calmly, and Arthur has to fight against a shiver.

 

 

  
_MARRAKESH_   


 

 

Morocco is caught high in an early-summer blaze; the golden air is baked thick and heavy, pressing hard against their backs the moment they leave their sanctuary of the air-conditioned plane. Arthur’s apartment lies to the north-east of the old city; hardly in the middle of nowhere, but they were thrown into the worst tactical position possible the second they touched the tarmac, so there’s not much more that can be done. Besides, the city is famously labyrinthine, and after his years in Mombasa Arthur’s got pretty damn good at losing a tail without losing himself.

“We haven’t got the time we need for surveillance,” Arthur says as they spread out in his living-room, finding an appropriately comfortable place to sprawl in the mid-afternoon heat as they wait for Arthur’s supposedly state-of-the-art AC to kick in. “So Benji, I’m expecting a little magic from you here. I know the tech from the IMF’s off-limits, so just tell me what you need and I’ll get it.”

“Masks,” Benji says immediately with a grin. Eames rolls his eyes. “But yeah,” he adds, scrabbling about for pen and paper. “I’ll draw you up a list, two ticks.”

“Eames, I want you to give us a route to the vault, while Will and I work on Richardson and find out where else he might be keeping Ethan.” Eames scowls at him, always obtuse to doing any actual work, but they both know he has always been damn good thief – far better than Arthur could ever dream to be. He used to crack banks for entertainment in his tea break. “The two of you will go in to find Ethan and I’ll go after Richardson with Benji.”

Will’s head snaps up at once. “No way. We get Ethan, pull back and regroup before we go for Richardson,” he says, eyes hard. “Fuck, Arthur, splitting up is what’s got me here in the first place.”

Arthur shakes his head. “It won’t work like that. The second he knows you’ve gone into that bank he’ll run, especially if he’s keeping Ethan someplace else. He’s not going to hang around to let you catch him should you get out of there alive.”

“Then let him go,” Will answers, voice tight. “I’d rather lose Richardson than you.”

“He’ll come back,” Eames says from across the room, flicking through a book in Arabic tugged free from Arthur’s neatly-stacked bookcase. “Even if we do get Hunt, he’ll just try again. You can’t babysit all of us forever.”

Will puts his head into his hands, rubs fiercely at his eyes. “I can’t believe this is happening,” he mutters, shaking his head.

Eames drops the book back awkwardly on the top of the others just to piss Arthur off. “I’ve constantly told your brother dearest four isn’t enough for a team, but I’m always ignored for my troubles.” He shrugs easily. “I could always rope in some locals, if you’d rather – ”

“Definitely not,” Arthur interrupts, eyes on Will. He stares at his brother, tries to work out what he’s thinking; Will’s sat in silence, caught in his own mind, his expression tight and miserable, a blankness there he can’t recognise. When they were kids they’d been practically telepathic – had driven their parents crazy – but they haven’t been like that for longer than he can remember. They’d not even spoken for months before now. There might as well be a stranger sat across the room.

“Right, well, I suppose I’d better get down to work then, hadn’t I?” Eames grumbles. “Seeing as it’s all hanging on me, as bloody per. Come along, Benji dear, you’d best remind me another dozen times how impossible this whole venture is.”

A tight silence falls when the others leave, and it’s just him and Will and the clatter of the city out the window. “Will,” he starts cautiously, still fumbling for what to say.

“I’m okay, Arthur. Really.” Will smiles at him emptily, and when he gets to his feet there’s a precision to his movements, as if to counteract some greater sway. “I heard about Mal,” he adds, and Arthur feels his hackles rise on instinct, despite the fact it’s Will he’s talking to. “I’m sorry. I’m glad Dom’s back with his kids.”

“You know about that?” Arthur asks tightly. Will works for the goddamn American government, after all, and as much as Saito supposedly made Dom legit he virulently dislikes the idea that they’re keeping an eye on him nonetheless.

Will’s ersatz smile broadens slightly. “I know about a lot of things,” he murmurs to no one in particular, and something about it makes Arthur shiver.

 

 

 

 

A squat, single-storey building fills the viewscreen, indistinguishable from its neighbours save for its height and the big red line Benji has drawn around it. “The National Bank of Morocco,” Benji says proudly, a huge smile curving across his face.

Will raises an eyebrow. “That’s a house, Benji.”

“Ahhh,” Benji says, his grin widening. “And that’s the clever bit. The perfect disguise, up until a poor bumbling English tourist with guidebook-level Arabic stumbles his way in and spots the state-of-the-art CCTV system, the armed guards and the metal detector built into the receptionist’s desk.”

Will rolls his eyes. “Espionage at its finest.”

Benji scowls at him. “Hey, give me a break, we didn’t even know where this place was four hours ago!”

“One gold star for Benji,” Eames says dryly as Arthur pushes himself off the low-slung sofa to study the picture more closely. “Shall we move onto the interesting part, dear?”

“Right,” Benji says, expression going a little grave. “So, there’s only one way in and one way back out, and that’s through this lobby.” The image on the screen transfigures into a blurry, underhand, pixelated photo of a wide white marble entrance-way, empty save for a large, glass-panelled receptionist’s desk sitting squat in the middle of the room, five tough-looking men in black FLAK jackets sporting rather large weapons and a small elevator to the right. “The whole complex is underground, and _this_ is the point everything has to go through. No delivery entrance, ventilation system – well, there is one, the vaults go half a kilometre down, but nowhere near big enough to be useful. You go up to the desk, prove your identity and your membership and only then can you be escorted down into the vaults.”

“So we need a list of clients,” Arthur says.

Benji snorts. “Not in a month of Sundays,” he replies, shaking his head. “We’ve got no way of getting to the actual server, it’s under 600 metres of concrete and only accessible through that lift. As for hacking it, we’re talking snowball’s chance in hell here, and if I can’t hack into this place’s server I challenge you to find someone on the planet who can. And don’t bother trying to chase up the man who made it, he’s been dead for over thirty-five years.”

“Which is where I come in,” Eames interjects, sidling into view.

Arthur groans. “If you tell me there’s an Eames family vault there, I may punch you.”

Eames grins. “Not quite, but I do happen to have an old family friend whose particular blend of paranoia and inebriation allowed him to confess to me one night he may have such a thing within his possession to hide the priceless antiquities his grandfather, ah, acquired after the war.”

“Well, that’s an in,” Benji agrees, nodding. “Presuming your friend wasn’t, you know, lying through his alcohol-tinged teeth.”

“What do you have to do to prove who you are?” Will asks.

“The works,” Benji replies. “Legal ID, retinal scan, fingerprint, DNA test, but they’re not an issue. I can knock up a passport in minutes, and a lens and some finely-shaped silicone should take care of the other two – ”

“And the DNA test?” Arthur interrupts, looking sceptical. “They’re not easy to cheat.”

Benji grins. “Well, as a lovely lady once remarked to me, a DNA test is only as good as the records you keep,” he replies, waggling his eyebrows, and Arthur will treasure the look on Eames’ face for a long, long time.

“I thought you couldn’t hack into the servers,” Will says with a frown.

“I can’t,” Benji admits, “but here’s where we get lucky – they rely on the DNA records of their client’s country of origin. Believe it or not, it’s actually illegal for them to hold their own records, there was a big fuss about it back in the 90s and they nearly got shut down – anyway, all I need to do is hack into the British government’s databank, swap Eames’ DNA for his friend’s – ” Eames sends him a dark look. “Don’t worry, I realised you probably didn’t want your DNA on file. It’ll wipe itself after an hour and self-destruct on any other drives it’s copied to. I’m not an _idiot_.”

Arthur raises an eyebrow. “Are you seriously saying it’s easier to hack into the British government than this bank?”

Benji shrugs. “Pretty much. Don’t blame me, we’ve always had crap security. I went to uni with the guy who designed their system. Wanker.”

“So that’s our in,” Will says slowly. “Or Eames’ in, anyway. What about me? Do I just claim to be his bodyguard or something?”

Benji shakes his head. “Not an option. You have to be a client or an employee to get into the vault.”

“You could replace one of the guards,” Arthur suggests. “Then you could accompany Eames down without it looking suspicious.”

“Nice idea,” Benji says, “but there are five guards on duty at any time and you need at least two to go down. We could probably just about manage putting Will in place if I pull a few strings, but you’d have an extra to deal with once you got down there.”

Arthur frowns. “How difficult would he be to neutralise?”

“Very,” Benji replies, and gestures at the viewscreen, which morphs automatically into a schematic of the vaults beyond. “There’s nowhere to hide him. The elevator stops on a hundred and two levels; the ground floor, a hundred vault levels, and the server room. This,” he continues, shifting the picture to the middle of a seemingly never-ending, white-walled corridor, “is where you enter the vault. There are a hundred doors, and each one leads to a room, which in turn leads to the rooms adjacent to _that_ room. Each one is four metres square with a hundred deposit boxes to each wall. Each room has four doors to the other four rooms around it, and at least one of these will be a fake. The fake sets off the alarm system and you don’t want that to happen; the doors are hermetically sealed and five seconds after the alarm goes they suck out the air. It’s a very, ah, _conclusive_ burglar alarm.”

“Don’t trigger the alarm,” Eames mutters, eyebrows raised. “Got it.”

“Exactly. It’s pretty damn sensitive, too – we’re talking seismic monitor, heat monitor, condensation monitor, even a sound monitor in case someone fires a gun. Now, there’s no actual CCTV down in the vaults, but their sensors are so damn – well, sensitive – they practically don’t need any. Anyway, only the guards know which doors in which rooms are alarmed, and how you navigate the vaults, although this shouldn’t be too hard – I can probably knock us up a bit of tech to bypass this and get us to the right room.”

“And which _is_ the right room?” Arthur asks.

“Right, here comes the tricky bit – ” he begins, and is cut off by Eames’ snort of incredulity.

“So everything else was easy?” Eames asks dryly, eyebrow raised.

“Comparatively,” Benji replies with a grin. “Everyone who owns a vault is issued a nine-digit code. The first two numbers gives you the floor, and the next five refer to the room; the last three identify which box they own within the room. It starts with zero rather than ending in ten, so you have to remember to add one on. So if your code was 46039138N – ”

“That’s forty-seventh level, row four, column ninety-two, and your box would be the fourth one in the ninth row on the north wall,” Eames says slowly, frowning. “Am I right?”

“Yep,” Benji replies. “And after all that, the box obviously demands a key or a passcode of its own.”

“So there are a hundred rooms, each with four hundred boxes, across a hundred floors,” Will says quietly. “And any of the rooms could have Ethan in – ”

“ – or any of the boxes could tell us where he is,” Benji continues. “Which leaves us with – ”

“A hundred thousand rooms, and four million boxes,” Arthur finishes, shaking his head. “And no idea where to start.”

“Really?” Will says, voice soft, brow furrowed. He snatches up a pen and prints out the digits 000 000 00X, and then underneath writes ETHAN HUNT.

“Same number of digits,” Benji breathes. “Maybe the numbers – ”

“Won’t work,” Eames interrupts, shaking his head.

Benji frowns at him. “Why not?”

“Two reasons,” he answers. “One, there are twenty-six letters in the alphabet, and only ten possible distinct numbers, so each individual digit couldn’t represent an individual letter. Two, Hunt ends in a ‘t’, and the only possible letters are N, S, E and W.”

“Damn,” Will mutters, dropping the pen and sitting back with a scowl. “I thought it was too easy.”

“In case you’ve forgotten, this is a trap,” Eames says dryly. “The man’s not going to be subtle.”

Benji shrugs. “In that case, why not start with the obvious? You know, birthdays, social security numbers – ”

“Yeah, but whose?” Will interrupts, frowning. “Mine, his, his mother’s, what? We won’t have time to try all the options.”

Arthur heaves out a sigh, mouth a tight line. “We’ve got no choice,” he mutters, scouring his face. “We’ve got to get into that server room.”

Eames nods. “It’d get us the client list for starters, and even if Richardson owns a couple of boxes a few options is better than thousands. How do you get down to server level?”

Benji shakes his head, snorting. “I’m telling you now, you _can’t_. To even get the elevator to go down to that level requires two passcodes, two individual keys both entered simultaneously to an okay from reception, never mind the millions of security cameras and the defensive systems in place to prevent you from so much as plugging in an external drive before the system goes into self-destructive meltdown. Oh, and triggers the alarm, naturally.”

A thick, miserable silence falls across them. “Fuck,” Will breathes. “ _Fuck_.”

“Okay, stop, stop,” Arthur mutters, turning on his heel and pacing the breadth of the room. “We’re making this too difficult – he wants us to go in there. There has to be something,” Arthur murmurs, scouring his face with his hand. “Some clue. Something he’s told us and we haven’t noticed – ”

“Arthur,” Eames says sharply, and Arthur stutters to a halt, turns to look at him with a frown. Eames picks up Will’s pen and at the bottom of the page writes neatly the numbers 528491.

Arthur stares at him, thunderstruck. “No,” Arthur breathes, shaking his head. “He can’t know. There’s no _way_ he could – ”

“What is it?” Will interrupts, looking between them sharply.

“This is as much about you as it is about Will,” Eames says softly, and puts down the pen.

“It’s a job we worked,” Arthur replies quietly after a heavy silence, eyes still on Eames. “A long time ago.”

Will glances at Benji. “Does it give us something?”

Benji nods. “Six digits gives us the room.”

“That’s it,” Will says quietly, leaning back in his chair. “That’s where he’ll be.”

Arthur says nothing, still staring down at the string of digits, expression shocked and open. Eames shakes his head. “That’s where Richardson wants us to think he’ll be.”

Will glares at him. “You got any better ideas?”

He raises an eyebrow. “Yes, as a matter of fact, and none of them involve going into a concrete underground deathtrap at the whim of a megalomaniac in order to not save a man I’ve never met.”

Arthur watches the way Will tenses, sees the anger writhe through his body; his brother stands in a fluid motion and stalks over to the window, fingers curling and unfurling beside him. “Eames,” Arthur warns, rubbing his eyes.

“He’s got a point, though,” Benji says in a small voice, glancing at Will’s back nervously. “There’s no guarantee Ethan – or even any information _about_ Ethan – will be in there and that Richardson won’t sic the IMF on us once we’re within a hundred yards of the place.”

“We’re better off going after Richardson,” Eames agrees. “If we get him, we can make him give us Hunt.”

“Not an option. He’s – invisible,” Arthur mutters, shaking his head. “I can’t get anything on him.” Eames raises an eyebrow, but says nothing; they both know if Arthur can’t trace him then no-one can. “He’s been studying my methods, watching me work for years. He’s good – he’s really good. I can’t even tell you for sure he’s in Morocco, never mind Marrakesh.”

“Surely he’ll want to be here,” Benji says, frowning. “Even if just to watch us fail, to see Will get caught.”

Eames shrugs. “He’s smart enough to delegate, and paranoid enough to only employ people he trusts. We don’t have that guaranteed.”

“He’ll be here,” Will interjects quietly from across the room. “He’ll be careful, but he’ll be here. He’s spent years tracing us down, he’s committed kidnapping, murder, fraud, extortion, and that’s just as far as we know. But somehow, somewhere, he’ll slip up, and that’s when we get him. And when we do,” he adds, turning to face them, and Arthur goes cold at the fury he sees there, his own brother terrible and alien, framed by the dying sunlight. “I want him dead.” He glances at Benji. “How could he know we’ve entered the bank?”

“Er,” says Benji, obviously rattled, “well, I’m pretty sure he couldn’t hack the bank itself – ”

“Pretty sure?” Will repeats, and he’s a world away from the moment before; there’s an echo of a smile, something Arthur recognises from long ago.

“It’ll have to be the old-fashioned way, then,” Eames says, frowning. “Someone keeping an eye on the place who can give him a sign, maybe one of the employees – or loitering close enough to see the building himself. We can track the surrounding area quite comprehensively, but the first option is trickier to prevent.”

Benji shrugs. “If I’m sat in the van outside, I can easily monitor telephone calls across a four-mile radius.”

“Even secure lines?” Arthur asks, eyebrow raised.

Benji grins. “ _Especially_ secure lines. And I can get you a location in under four seconds,” he adds smugly. “Nifty bit of work, if I do say so myself.”

Will rolls his eyes. “Three guesses who designed it, then,” he mutters, smiling.

Eames looks entirely unconvinced. “And how does this stop Richardson blowing our cover to the IMF?”

“He wants us in the vault,” Will says, moving away from the window. “He wants me to see whatever he has there before he hands us in. Benji, how long does it take to get from ground level to the vault?”

“Including security checks, the elevator and navigating to the room – ” Benji frowns. “Call it twenty minutes?”

“So Eames goes into the bank,” Will continues slowly, looking across at him. “Richardson gets the call, which you pick up, trace back to the source and go after him. He won’t ring us in until he thinks we’re at vault level, so that gives you twenty minutes to get to him.”

Eames leans back in his chair, mouth tight. “I don’t like it,” he mutters, shaking his head. “There’s nothing to stop him calling us in the moment we cross the threshold except his pride and your brother’s crackpot theory, and we can’t expect all criminals to be idiots. If the IMF catch me, they will kill me. I’ve been on their books for far too long for anything else.”

A heavy silence reigns again. Arthur looks at his feet, his stomach in knots; he feels as if the universe has a gun to his temple, his brother in one hand and Eames in the other, and he doesn’t think he can make that choice. “You might not like it, Eames, but I don’t think we have another choice,” Arthur says quietly, trying to dispel his nerves. He glances across to Benji. “Do you need anything we haven’t already got?”

Benji shakes his head. “I can make do.”

“Right,” Arthur says heavily, looking between the three of them. “Tomorrow, then.”

“Tomorrow,” Will agrees, and closes his eyes.

 

 

 

 

The night is soft and cool, the city slipping quietly from one routine to the next with the setting of the sun. Pressing against the windows are the sounds of life, undiminished by the changing of the hour but of a different kind than before, the raucousness mutated somehow into something fresh and new, and Arthur itches to revisit this mostly unfamiliar city, to lose and find himself in its tiny, winding streets. He contents himself with the sprawling view he gets from his apartment window, the tiny flickers of light jumping into life across the horizon, burning in all different shades of yellow from deep, dark amber to the brightest gold.

Across the room, Will lies on the apartment’s spare bed, blue eyes open and sharp in the half-light; Arthur can tell his brother fears sleep. He shares the silence, propped up against the window-frame, eyes on the city beyond, a comfort at his side just as they had been as children in one role or the other more times than he can count.

It was with Will he shared his first dream, and later his first death; he was jolted awake just before his brother, the phantom press of a gun hot and bright against his collarbone. He remembers waiting beside him for the timer to run low, his hands still shaking, swallowing tears, nerves shot half to hell, and the look of pure, blank terror on Will’s face as he opened his eyes, grabbed his brother close, his free hand clawing desperately for the totem beside him on the floor.

The time stretches out, but when Arthur looks over next Will’s eyes are finally closed. It hurts him deep in his gut to see the misery engraved in his face even while he sleeps. He pulls the offensively vibrant curtains to and slips silently from the windowsill and out the bedroom door.

He nearly trips over Benji en route to his own room, snoring loudly and half draped across the sitting room floor; he’s rolled off the sofa and not been disturbed in the slightest by the fall. Arthur smiles to himself and drops a blanket over him, shuffles his limbs around to prevent any cramp and moves the coffee table out the way to prevent a concussion in the morning.

Eames is waiting for him in their room, window propped open to let the city wash through him. “Reminds me of Mombasa,” he says quietly as Arthur enters, letting the door fall closed behind him.

Arthur comes to stand at his side. “I want to go Stateside when we’re done.”

Eames glances at him. “For Will?”

“And for Dom,” Arthur admits, shrugging slightly. “I miss them both.”

Eames nods, resuming his steady stare out of the window. “Your parents?”

“Dead,” Arthur replies easily; it’s the standard answer in their profession, but in his case the truth. He’s always found it hard to lie to Eames. “Yours?”

“Alive,” Eames answers. “In England.”

Arthur has to fight against his own surprise. “You’ve never mentioned them,” he says.

Eames shoots him a sharp look. “You’ve never mentioned yours. I didn’t know you had a brother a week ago.”

“True,” Arthur replies softly, and Eames tastes the apology in the word; Arthur watches his body ease, the tenseness withdraw. “We hadn’t spoken for a long time,” he adds, and every time he thinks of it he’s never certain why. It drags deep across his nerves, tinges the words with guilt, although he’s sure that neither of them are to blame. Arthur had been angry at his brother once, but that was a long time ago; and Will had done everything he could to make it up to him in the meantime, everything and more.

“And yet you came when he called,” Eames says, but there’s no bite of criticism in his words; an observation, a recognition, fully aware that Will would implicitly do the same.

Silence stretches between them, warm and familiar, interrupted only by the noises of the night from beyond the window. “I don’t know how he stands it,” Arthur confides, his hands falling loose at his side from where they had rested against the window frame. “Not knowing. About Ethan.” He shakes his head. “It’d tear me to pieces.”

Eames watches him in silence, face half-visible in the city’s gloomy light, and Arthur forces himself to pull in a deep and steady breath; exhaustion presses hotly against his eyes, but it’s counteracted by the heavy pull of nerves, the fear of what they have to do tomorrow. “Get some rest,” Eames says quietly, returning his steady stare across the city. “I’ll join you in a bit.”

Eames hasn’t moved by the time Arthur falls into bed behind him, tiredness conquering his nerves in a heady, dizzying rush. He doesn’t join him before Arthur falls asleep, the press of Eames’ profile in the half-light sharp against the inside of his eyes.

 

 

 

 

A hot, heavy day rolls across Marrakesh, indistinguishable from the one before and the one which would come next, and on this otherwise unremarkable day Eames steps into the light, cool air of the National Bank of Morocco.

“Lucas Carnahan,” he says loudly upon entry with an adopted air of self-importance and a particularly prim accent to match the heavy plastic wrapped around his face. “Here to access my family vault.”

He stands before the receptionist’s desk and forces his heart to stay calm; he doesn’t put it past them to monitor him somehow, and it would be truly idiotic to blow his cover from a touch of pre-operation nerves. He is asked in turn for passport, retinal scan, thumbprint, all of which give him no qualms, and then to finish a spike of blood for his DNA; he finds the seconds slow to minutes, the steady crawl of jitters bursting up and down his spine. He holds the receptionist’s eye for as long as he can, flashes his most charming of smiles (although the man is unassuming, bulky and uninterested), but Eames notices the moment he relaxes, finds himself mentally thanking Benji and his lucky stars alike.

“You may proceed,” the receptionist says with an empty smile, gesturing towards the elevator beside him and nodding at the guards to his right. Two of them peel away from the group and come to Eames’ side; he struggles to recognise Will in either of the two who approach him, but trusts that he is beside him.

The elevator is where things become tricky. He notices with relief from the corner of his eye Will administering the emetic to their unsuspecting companion, and immediately steps aside; they have a long journey down, but mere moments before it thoroughly kicks into his system.

Eames glances in amusement at his supposedly unsuspecting escort as his companion folds over and vomits copiously over his own shoes. “I take it that’s not standard practice?”

Will rolls his eyes and reaches across to punch the _emergency_ button on the panel beside him. The grid crackles into life and barks a few angry words at Will in Arabic; he replies tersely, and after a long moment of silence the elevator judders to a halt, the doors pinging open on a deserted corridor. “I will accompany you down,” Will says to Eames in an accent he considers to be frankly hilarious. “He will wait here.”

Eames raises an eyebrow. “If you insist.”

Together, they roll the mostly-unconscious man out into the corridor beyond (only level twenty-one, Eames notes), and the elevator doors clunk back together before the lift judders back into life and continues its descent. “Clear for communication?” Will hisses, pulling free the plastic strip from his throat, back to his own voice, and Eames nods, patting himself down for his tools.

“No wire and no cameras in the lift,” he confirms, dropping to his knees and working open the panel before him.

“Benji, do we have a location on Richardson?”

 _“Affirmative,”_ Benji murmurs in their ear, and Will feels his chest clench, his throat thick. _“Call made and traced. Dispatching now.”_

“Benji, I’m patching you through now,” Eames interrupts from where he crouches on the floor. He clips a tiny blue cylinder along an exposed wire; a simple scrambler, the best Benji can do in such a situation. Enough to tell reception they’re on floor forty-eight rather than fifty-three.

 _“Scrambling,”_ Benji replies, and Eames backs away, screwing the panel back in place. _“Hit the button for fifty-three.”_

He hesitates. They’re well into the thirties now, and Benji had estimated their comms would cut out soon; if this fails, they are entirely on their own. “You’d better be bloody right about this,” Eames mutters, and presses it. Considering the lack of blaring alarms and the fact they’re both still breathing they conclude it to be a success, and Will shoots him a relieved look. “Never doubted the man,” Eames murmurs, and Will smiles.

The elevator slides to a halt once more, and they find themselves stepping into the cool, compressed air of the white-walled corridor, stretching away to either side, squarely in front of door fifty-one. Will shivers, and Eames can sympathise; the whole place feels wholly unnatural, eerie, almost as if it’s bulging at the seams. There is nothing but a snapping crackle of static in their ears; they are alone. Behind them, the elevator kicks back into life, pulling away with a long whine that makes Will jump. “What does that mean?” he hisses, hand flickering towards his gun.

“It means they’ve gone back for your fallen comrade,” Eames says quietly, glancing at him. Call it five minutes for the elevator to reach reception level, another five to go down and fetch the guy, another three to proceed down and drop off their new guard – they don’t have a lot of time. “These lot are mad for procedure; they have to stand on ceremony. We should move before they send another in his place to the forty-eighth floor and blow our scramble.” Will nods sharply, and together they step forward towards the door; Eames trains his eye to the centre of the steel, and feels a tiny shock as his lens jumps into life, scanning the frame. “Bloody Hell, Benji,” he mutters, resisting the urge to rub at his eye as it waters. “Could’ve used the warning.” After a long, clicking whirr which makes his whole head tingle the lens supplies the door with a healthy green tinge; not alarmed. “It’s safe,” he tells Will, and can tell from the nod he receives in return Will knows as much already. He pulls out his compass, lets it sit in the palm of his hand. “Time?”

“Nine minutes in,” Will replies, fingers locked in tense fists beside him.

Eames nods. “Onwards, then.”

The moment they enter the door slams shut behind them. The room itself is oddly monochrome, the harsh, dull steel of the deposit boxes contrasting with the sharp white of the walls, ceiling and floor; the only break to the monotony is the code of the room stamped in vivid red on the north wall, the numbers _520051_ in paint which looks brand new, shimmering slightly in the sharp, artificial light. The pull and push of their breath is very loud, and Eames has to suppress a shudder at the thought of the weight above them, of the fact the air may very soon run out. “I make north, south and east clean,” Will murmurs to him.

He shakes his head, forces himself to focus, runs his eyes across the doors; sure enough, west adopts a dull, ugly shade of red, whilst south and east tinge a bright green. “I concur,” he replies, and glances between the two, uneasiness running through him at the scale of their task. “This is impossible,” he murmurs, shaking his head.

“We’ve got no choice,” Will replies quietly, and together they step towards the southern door, fingers brushing at their sides.

The rooms come thick and fast, utterly indistinguishable save for the codes they find reliably stamped on each and every northern wall. With them so far under the ground Eames has no hope at all of navigating on his own, and they are forced to fall back on Benji’s clumsy but purpose-built algorithm programmed into a handheld computer whirring a high, infuriating whine from where it sits on Will’s hip, planning the vault’s schematic even as they slip from room to room.

The steady spin of white walls and thick, black metal doors is enough to make him dizzy, fingering his totem even within the confines of his heavy, stifling suit. He has to bite back a cry of protest, a plea to stop more times than he can count, chest feeling tighter with each pull, mind screaming at him to run far back the way he came, back into the sunlight and the open sky beyond. _Hell of a time to become claustrophobic_ , he admonishes himself, tries to focus on nothing but the tight black fabric pressed against Will’s back, grasp at his jangling nerves.

They stumble into yet another room, indistinguishable to him from the one before and unremarkable from the one they will enter next; Will is leading him, and Eames is completely lost. “Eames,” Will says quietly, frozen still, and Eames glances to the number stamped luridly above them; _528391_. Together they turn their eyes to the eastern door, hope and fear swooping through Eames’ chest, waiting for the sign –

It glows a deep, unforgiving red. “It’s alarmed,” Eames says quietly, the disappointment rocking deep in his stomach. He reaches for the handheld strapped to Will’s hip. _Route unavailable_ , he enters, pulling in a steadying breath. _Try again_. “How are we for time?”

“Thirteen minutes in,” he says quietly, eyes still locked helplessly on the door. “I hope Arthur’s doing okay.”

Eames pushes the handheld back in Will’s pocket, glancing at the deposit boxes towering all around him, holding unknown innumerable treasures; the thief in him craves him to stop, to try, _go on, just one, I bet you can, just one_. “Your brother can handle himself.” He puts a hand on Will’s arm, tries to break his rêverie. “Will,” he says gently.

Will snaps his eyes away, blinking hard, and shakes his head. “Which way?”

“North,” Eames replies, glancing at the northern door to check it still glows a steady green through his lens.

And so it begins again, their rapid route winding chaotically through the unchanging rooms. Time moves strangely here, and if Eames didn’t know better from the sharp bite of his familiar totem against his fingers he’d say it was dreamlike, minutes interchangeably rushing by in seconds or dragging in long, tiring years. With all his years of dreamwalking, he doesn’t think he’s ever been in a place less real than this. Only a handful of minutes pass before they stand once more in a room adjacent to the one they need, but Eames feels as if he’s been trapped in the high-walled, cloying vaults for decades, had whole years of his life leeched away; he’s never longed for sunlight so sharply before, anything other than the too-white alien push of the harsh electric light against his skin. Will stands tense beside him, and Eames’ eyes lock on the door, heart promptly jumping into his throat as the computer in his lens sparks and whirrs away, centuries falling past as they wait for its judgement –

 _Green_. He hears Will choke beside him, an aborted, desperate sound. He turns his eye back to the door, waiting for the readouts quietly. “I’m not getting any life signs,” Eames says softly, fear gnawing at his insides, the quiet of the vaults thick in his ears; there’s something wrong, here. Very wrong.

“They’re lead-lined,” Will replies, voice shaky. “Benji said it might not work.”

Eames unconsciously reaches down to his waist, aches for the familiar press of his gun against his fingers; there had been no chance of getting it through security. “You lead,” he says quietly, hoping to hell they have time to get in and out in time; the guard’s replacement must be well en-route by now. Will reaches across, hits down the handle and together they rush the room to find –

Nothing. It is no different from any which have passed before. Eames glances at the northern wall; _528491_. “We were wrong,” Eames says quietly, uneasiness crawling across his skin. “We should abort.” Will stands in silence, mouth slack with incredulity as he stares around the empty room. Eames takes Will’s wrist to check his watch; seventeen minutes in. They have to assume the worst, have to assume Arthur fails, and as of such they have no time to check another room; there’s not even enough time to get them back out.

“Will,” he says quietly, unable to keep the fear from his voice. Will says nothing, but he nods once, a sharp, quick movement, face tight in wretched disbelief. Eames tugs the handheld from his pouch as his stomach floods with uneasy relief, begins to ask the programme to plan their route back out –

– and a deposit box across the room pings open with a quiet click. Beside him, Will goes utterly still, heart jumping into his throat. “Eames,” he says softly, voice wracked with confusion, at a total loss of what to do.

“I see it,” Eames replies, the fear in his gut multiplying tenfold; Will peels away from his side and steps slowly towards it. “Careful,” Eames hisses as the muscles in his legs lock, his instinct screaming in his ears to _run_. He watches Will approach, breath caught and pulse thick in his throat. Will pauses at arm’s length, reaches with the tip of his gun and knocks the door open; but there’s no sign, no rumble of alarms, no bullet in the ceiling. He glances across at Eames, who stares back at him hopelessly, wanting nothing more than for them to leave. The quiet chirp of the computer breaks their heavy silence, a route back to the lift already planned.

Slowly, Will rotates on his heel, inches his head into the frame before the box – and nothing. No spray of bullets meets him, and Eames pulls in a slightly easier breath. “There’s something here,” Will murmurs, frowning into the darkened space; there’s no flashlight clipped onto his belt, and he peers at the lumpen mass in the gloom, face locked in puzzlement. He reaches in with a gloved hand and his fingers close round – something soft, squashy under his fingers, texture uncertain until he pulls it into the light and sees –

A mask. Even in the half-dishevelled thing before him Will can recognise the face, but a thousand times more important is the bullet hole which cleaves between the eyebrows, still spattered slightly with a stranger’s blood.

_Ethan is alive._

He swallows back a sob, a wall of relief almost flooring him. He locks his knees, slumps heavily onto the boxes at his side, ignores them as they rattle cacophonously. He’s aware only remotely of Eames’ hand against his arm, shaking him, trying to drag him to the door. “Will,” Eames hisses, a look of panic on his face. “We’re twenty-one minutes in, Will. We have to go.”

“Yeah,” he mutters, blinking heavily. He shakes his head; it feels foggy and thick on his neck, drooping towards the floor. He glances back towards the box to check there’s nothing else left behind, and frowns; it seems to glisten slightly in the air, turning blurry round the edges. “Eames – can you – ?”

Eames turns to look in exasperation, half out of his mind for fear of blaring alarms and the rapid rush of sucking air – and is just in time to see Will crashing to the floor, his whole body locked in one tight spasm as his mind drops into unconsciousness like a stone.

“Fuck,” Eames breathes, torn in horror between the door and Will’s form pooled around his feet – and spots it, a familiar hazy shimmer in the air. He slaps his hand across his mouth, but too late, far too late – his very bones feel leaden, dragging him down to the cool concrete of the floor and pinning him there. He slams gracelessly down as a deep, dark blackness bursts across the inside of his eyes.

 

 

 

 

In the white-walled room, Eames wakes alone. His hand is on his totem before he opens his eyes, cradling it in the soft veil of his palm as he staggers to his feet and vomits away to one side, shuddering, the drug rocking through his muscles in agonising spikes. He leans against the boxes, their metal cool against his hand, tries to spit the taste from out between his teeth.

He opens his eyes softly, tries to reintroduce them to the harsh synthetic light and is rewarded by a hammering headache, thrumming through his body with every blink, every twitch of movement, the view of the room acrid against his aching eyes. It stands as it did before; white walls, black doors, the towering boxes on either side, one still hanging open loosely. He nudges it gently, and it sways softly as if in a breeze, though no air would ever touch it thus so far underground.

It hardly takes him long to notice Will is gone – as is, he realises as he goes to rub his eye, his tools, his mask and his lens, although not his earpiece, which stands to serve as a reminder his loneliness in a dull thrum of quiet static. There’s no sign of a struggle, but Will was hardly fighting fit when last he saw him. He has no idea how long he’s been unconscious; Will could be halfway across the world by now.

With his lens and Will’s handheld gone, he has no hope of navigating through the vaults alone. He’s trapped here, until such time as the guards decide to drag him out or more likely pull the air from under him; the very walls seem to bulge, the air thinning in his mouth as he huffs short, desperate breaths. “Get a grip,” he hisses, pushes himself off the boxes in a rattling jangle and surveys the room, kicking his brain back into gear. He’s damned if he’s going to die down here in this unassuming, monochromatic cell. He doesn’t need some damned device to tell him where to go; his memory was legendary a decade and a half ago, and he’s not spent the intervening years idly.

He glances at the four solid metal doors and frowns, rubbing at his pounding eyes. They entered through the northern door, he remembers, and their earlier approach from the west was blocked – “So that one’s alarmed, and that not,” he murmurs, looking between the two. If he can denote some difference, some change in the frame, some distinct heaviness – if he can tell the two apart, can identify the tell-tale signs, he can get himself back out again. He approaches the western door with caution, runs his fingers across the metal lightly, scanning for singularities –

And it springs open under his touch. His heart slams into his throat as he braces for the klaxon, the steady rumble of alarm, the hissing rush of withdrawn air – but nothing comes. He has to take a moment then, pull in deep, steadying breaths, fight against the nausea squirming through his gut. “Christ, I thought you had me there,” he whispers to the empty room, and chuckles quietly. The alien noise echoes eerily.

He eases open the door and peers into the next room. It looks unchanged from before, save for the western door in this room lies open too – and in the one beyond, he realises, and the one after, a long, fading string of doors peeled open all along the row, and at the end he sees – he thinks he sees – a man, slumped in a chair, body open and sprawled.

“Will,” he says quietly, and jumps into a run, belting along the innumerable archways, his heart high and hot in his throat.

He hurtles to a halt beside him, head pounding thickly and his eyes aching. A PASIV lies open at Will’s feet, spewing its cables upon the concrete; one line trickles down from Will’s right arm, and its twin curls serpentine across the floor, obviously used but now abandoned. The mask has been ripped from his face and thrown aside; it lays in the corner beside him, twisted and grotesque. Eames crouches down beside the PASIV, though fears his ignorance too much to intervene. The sedative looks standard, the setup normal – but with only half a minute left on the clock he decides it safest to wait it out. He takes up Will’s wrist gently in the hope of learning the time, but finds his watch has been taken; he lets it drop again, disappointed, mouth curving into a frown. He breathes the thin air slowly and thinks of Arthur, stranded up above, wondering what’s become of the two of them, and it makes his stomach squirm.

Three – two – one – and the timer runs to zero, the PASIV by his feet dropping its gentle hum and falling into idleness. There’re a few more heartbeats of panic in which Will appears to sleep on – and then his whole body suddenly convulses in a tight, painful arch against the plastic chair, falls back against it with a slam in time for Will to turn his head and retch violently over the arm. Eames is on his feet in seconds, holding Will down and helping him through the waves of nausea, murmuring nonsense words of comfort and all the while promising death to whichever sick bastard dreamt up this particular concoction.

“Will,” he mutters when he settles down, placing a hand on either side of his head and staring into his eyes; both are cloudy and unfocused, each pupil dilated to a different size, and neither reacts to the snap of his fingers. “Can you hear me?” He gets a jumbled, broken mumble in reply before Will’s eyes roll back to white and he slumps back in the chair, happily unconscious once more.

Eames straightens up and swears quietly under his breath, glancing around the room. The eastern door has slammed shut again, and he daren’t approach it for fear of it being alarmed; the room is _528400_ , one he’s almost certain they didn’t pass through on their way through, although he’d be hard pressed to remember if they had. He turns back to Will and spends a moment patting him down to check for broken bones, make sure it’s safe to move him – and his hand brushes across something thick and cold strapped in at Will’s hip. _The computer_ , he thinks, and mutters “thank fuck” to the empty room, flipping it open and letting it boot up as he stands to pull Will’s dead weight across his shoulders. “Christ,” he mutters, buckling under the strain, “you’re lucky your brother likes to keep me built like a sodding fire engine.” The computer in his pocket chirrups brightly; their escape route is planned.

On any other day, at any other moment Eames would have paused to consider how utterly suspicious this all was; the rooms which happened to spring open, the computer which just happened to have been left at Will’s side, the security which just happened to not have come down and kicked his unconscious body all around their infiltrated vaults, but with Arthur’s comatose brother attached to his side and hundreds of feet of solid concrete pressing down above his head Eames rather unequivocally decided he needed to get out, and he’d fight his way there tooth and nail should it call for it.

His earpiece snaps back into life around floor twenty-three, Benji’s voice nearly making him put a bullet through the lift wall from sheer edginess. _“ – you are hearing this, please respond. This message is on a loop. If you are hearing this, please respond. This – ”_

“Benji?” he rasps, painfully loud even over the steady rattle of the lift winching its way toward the surface.

 _“I’m here,”_ Arthur says quietly after a few moments of deep, gut-shredding silence; Eames has to force his legs not to crumple from relief, his heart clenching tightly in his chest. _“You okay?”_

“Just about,” Eames replies, shifting his attention back to the lift doors; floor thirteen. “Will’s out for the count, I’ll shove us in a taxi and come back to the hotel, provided we don’t get riddled with bullets the moment we hit ground level.”

There’s a pause before Arthur speaks again. _“Negative,”_ he replies, voice tight. _“New location. We have Richardson.”_


	3. Chapter 3

The warm, bright room is quiet, save for the bubbling rumble of the city below. “I don’t like this,” Eames says. “Not at all.”

They stand around Richardson, unconscious and lying prone across the living room floor, a vague half-smile caught across his face. “Neither,” Arthur murmurs, fingers still twitching on his gun.

Benji shifts uneasily. “Look, normally I’d say you were just being paranoid, because breaking into that damn bank and tracing the call back to him – that wasn’t _easy_. But – ”

“The bank was empty when we reached ground level, though I’ll bet anything it’s running like clockwork now,” Eames interrupts, pursing his lips. “And Richardson was here, alone, with only two guards three floors below, almost like he was – ”

“Waiting for us,” Arthur finishes quietly.

Eames nods. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t shake the feeling we’re playing right into this bastard’s hands.”

There comes the soft, steady squeak of a door opening down the hall; Will. A thick, hot dread had knotted tightly around Arthur’s gut when Eames, looking pale and worse for wear himself, had appeared in the doorway with Will draped gracelessly across his torso, and just knowing he’s awake – on his feet – thinking – and Arthur lets out a huff of breath he hadn’t known he was holding. Any relief, however, is gone within a heartbeat of Will filling up the doorframe; he looks tense – more than tense, every step deliberate, his empty hands furling by his side, eyes flitting around the room lightning-fast, absorbing everything. He looks... caged. “How did I get here?” he asks, voice calm but sharp.

“They knocked you out at the bank,” Arthur replies softly. “Eames brought you back.”

Will glances at Eames, but says nothing, chooses to stalk towards them and squat down beside Richardson instead. “This him?” Arthur nods, but Will looks at Benji; the simple, inescapable truth of where Will’s trust lies hits Arthur deep. “You sure?”

Benji shrugs. “There’s no DNA on file, so we can’t be certain, but we know he’s not wearing a mask, and neither has he had reconstructive surgery. If it looks like him, it’s him.”

Will nods, kicks back on his hackles and gets to his feet. “Ethan’s alive,” he says, eyes on the body on the floor. “I saw the mask, back at the bank.”

Arthur glances at Eames, who shares his scepticism. “Will – ”

“Ethan’s alive,” Will reiterates calmly, “and this bastard knows where.” He looks at Arthur, and the cool depth of rage he sees there cuts his brewing protests short, leaves him winded and more than a little afraid. “So how do we get it out of him?”

They stare down at the unconscious man in silence. “We could put him under,” Eames says slowly, frowning a little. “Extract it.”

Arthur raises an eyebrow, looks over at him incredulously. “An operation like that takes weeks to build, not to mention that after last time ‘militarised’ won’t even cover what goes on in his subconscious – ”

“We’ve dealt with worse,” Eames points out dryly, eyebrow arched. “We just need to go deep enough.”

“Deep enough,” Will echoes in a mumble, brow furrowed, his eyes losing focus.

“Er,” Benji says hesitantly, raising his hand. “I feel like at this point I should remind everyone of the angry bodyguards which might come crashing through that door any second, so can we possibly argue logistics somewhere a little more secure?”

Eames glances at Arthur. “What do you think we should do with him?”

Arthur sighs. “I don’t know. Obviously we can’t stay here, but I don’t think we can keep him at my apartment for any period of time without betraying its location, and we need to be somewhere secure.”

“If you think your place isn’t safe, we have to get him out of the city,” Will says quietly. “We won’t be able to smuggle him through at the border. Benji?”

Benji shrugs, balanced precariously on the back of a low-slung, velveteen sofa. “Well, I know there are IMF safehouses at Safi, Essaouira and Taroudant, but to put it bluntly we’ve got fuck-all chance of using them without alerting the IMF.”

“I have houses at Casablanca and Tangier,” Eames suggests. “If we drive through the night we can be at either by morning.”

Arthur nods, mouth thinning as his brain kicks into gear. “Casablanca’s too close – let’s go for Tangier. Benji, is there room in the van for five?”

“If I move some stuff around, yeah.”

“Eames, give him a hand,” Arthur says, and doesn’t miss Eames’ petulant, grousing roll of his eyes at the thought of manual labour. “Will – ” he begins, but cuts himself short at the sight of his brother, eyes on Richardson’s body slumped across the floor, framed almost angelically by the flushed skyline. Arthur’s learnt to trust his instincts, and there’s a cool, dark fear curling inside his chest. “Will, can we talk?”

Will glances at him, impassive. “Sure.” Eames, forever the diplomat, sends Benji a terse look, jerks his head to the door and hightails out of there without so much as a glance in Arthur’s direction.

Arthur stands there in the dusky twilight and stares at his brother, his mind ripped of everything he wants to say, or at least the words to say them. He wants – no, he needs to know his brother, his big brother, William Brandt, is safe, okay, still with him, but the truth is he’s damn afraid of the answer he’d get. “Is there something you need?” Will asks quietly, calmly, breaking the silent, anxious churn of his thoughts.

“Just wondering whether you’ll be okay to drive,” he lies feebly, kicking himself viciously for his cowardice. “We can take it in turns through the night.”

Will shakes his head. “I’ll do it,” he answers, rubbing wearily at his eyes. “I won’t be able to sleep anyway.”

The sky is well past dusk by the time Arthur exits the hotel room, Richardson safely ensconced in the back with Benji, smuggled from the hotel in a gurning, bulging service trolley. He slides into his seat on the front bench of the van beside Eames as Will takes up his place at the wheel; Will kicks and drags the spluttering, wheezing engine into some semblance of life, and Arthur slips back against the rough, plastic leather, content to watch the city slide away beside him, raucous and enchanting even under the shadow of night. Eames is a warm, heavy weight against his side, and he slips dreamlessly asleep, content and comfortable in their silence.

 

 

 

 

Arthur drifts awake as the clock hits two, tetchy and aching on the cool, creaking seats. Outside the window the world is a deep, tar-black on every side, cleaving at the horizon into an iridescence akin to beetle’s wings as the dull moonlight plays quietly off the sway of the waves. It doesn’t help him derive a location; from what he remembers of the route they drive along the coastline for some time.

Eames is slumped across a ridiculous amount of the bench, his hot weight uncomfortable against Arthur’s side. Arthur grabs him by the sleeve, drags him over to the left, props him up against the doorframe (still snoring happily) and climbs over him nimbly to sit behind Will, still stoic at the wheel, hands at ten and two. “Where are we?”

“We passed through Kenitra about a half hour ago,” Will replies, glancing in the mirror, slowing gradually to allow a rare car past them. “I took the long route to avoid Casablanca. We’ve got three, four hours tops before Tangiers.”

“Right before dawn,” Arthur says.

He shrugs further down into his seat, brings his arms up across his chest. Will glances at him, frowning slightly. “You cold? I think Benji put some blankets in the back.”

Arthur shakes his head. “No, I’m good. Never gonna be as cold as Calais, right?” Will chuckles, and for a moment there’s a ghostlike smile around his mouth; for a moment, the deep, plum-tinged skin under his eyes and the tight lines caught around his temples and the corners of his mouth seem to dribble away.

“Or Bangkok,” Will murmurs back, still grinning. “I’ll never forget Bangkok.”

In that second, he’s Will again, Arthur’s Will, and it brings with it a deep, leaden weight in his gut, like a punch to the chest. He’s watching him age decades in days. He’d thought he’d just been away from Will too long, lost the ability to read his brother, that the IMF had turned him into something hard and cruel – but it’s not true. “There’s something wrong,” Arthur says quietly, watches the way Will’s hands tense against the wheel. “Something you’re not telling me.”

“You’ve always been so observant, Arthur,” Will murmurs. “You work it out.”

Arthur sits back in the wheezing leather of the bench, stunned into silence. It’s something bad, then. Very bad. He’s pretty sure the last time Will snapped at him like that he was five years old and he’d broken the head off Will’s favourite dinosaur. “Pull over,” Arthur replies, his tone empirically calm. “Get some rest. Let me drive.”

Will’s knuckles flash white. “I’m fine.”

Arthur snorts, but he lets it drop, staring blankly out of the windscreen and chewing on his anger. Silence settles, and Arthur starts to feel the chill of the night air creep into his bones; he rebels against Benji’s blankets, because hitting thirty hasn’t shaken him free of any of his stubbornness. He’d move closer to Eames but the man is a damn furnace; he’d be half crisped and half numb by the morning.

“I’m sorry,” Will mutters eventually and glances across at him, flexing his fingers. “I just – ”

“Yeah,” Arthur interrupts, and shrugs. “It’s cool. I’d be a mess.”

Will smiles; it’s a little emptier than before, but not a lot. He’s interrupted further by a long, thundering snore from Eames ridiculous by even his standards; Arthur doesn’t miss the look of vague horror on Will’s face. “Is that normal?”

Arthur laughs. “Relatively.”

“I’m surprised you don’t strangle him,” Will mutters darkly, but there’s the tiniest curve of amusement to his mouth. “I like him,” he adds, after a while.

Something warm and bright bubbles through Arthur’s chest. He’s never exactly wanted – or expected – Will’s approval, but knowing that he thinks Eames is a good guy... matters somehow. He looks at his brother, tries to memorise the way he looks just at that moment. “I hope I meet Ethan,” Arthur says softly.

The smile slides off Will’s face, expression tight and sober once more. “Yeah,” Will says quietly, eyes back on the road. Arthur lets his eyes drift to the horizon, to the vague orange-gold burn that marks one edge of the map; even at this distance there are small, quiet hints of the cities around in the ersatz light they throw up into the sky. “Arthur – ” Will gestures at his neck in an odd, half-aborted gesture, and looks across at him, eyes sharp and painfully blue. “Richardson. Back in Marrakesh. In the bank. He took my totem.”

Arthur’s blood runs cold, and for a terrifying heartbeat he’s back in the States in a baggy black suit and shoes that pinch, staring at Mal’s gravestone on a watery grey day. “This is real, Will,” he says thickly, throat catching on the words in his haste to say them.

Will laughs humourlessly. “As if you’d say different, right?” He shakes his head. “I have to find Ethan,” he mutters. “I’ll – I’ll look at him, and I’ll – I’ll just know. If it’s him, I’ll know.”

“Dom always used to say he could tell,” Arthur says quietly. “When he saw Mal.” A long time ago, Will once might have been able to look at Arthur and know for sure; but the years stretch out between them, feeling like a lifetime.

Will flexes his fingers on the wheel. “Didn’t work for Mal.”

Anger bubbles in Arthur, sharp and hot, the distance between them a vicious maw. Will doesn’t know Mal as anything more than theory, than a test case, doesn’t know the way she used to smile or burn her food or the softness of her hair. “Mal was insane, Will,” he replies tightly. “She didn’t know her kids by the end.”

Will nods once, stares firmly at the road. “Can you tell?” he asks softly, after a while. “When you look at him?”

Arthur finds himself staring at the solid, blank darkness in front of them, imagines Eames grousing at Benji or staring out of the window in boredom or hunched over his work, caught up in perfect concentration. He smiles. “Always.”

 

 

 

 

He sits awake with Will until morning comes, and with it brings their first view of Tangiers; a clutter of squat houses and high, winding towers rending the forget-me-not sky. Eames’ house is in the suburbs to the south-east, and they spend another good hour idling through the early-morning traffic as the sun inches its lazy way across the skyline; it’s well after seven when the van judders to an ominous, squeaking halt outside of a nondescript house in on a nondescript street which Eames (having been dragged grudgingly from unconsciousness by Arthur not ten minutes before) insists is his. “I’ll go open her up,” he mutters, rubbing sleep from his eyes and yawning heavily. “We’ve not been here for years, lord knows what state she’s got herself in.”

Arthur swings himself down onto the pavement after him, feeling the heat of the day sit across him like a heavy, wet blanket; the morning’s hardly begun and he can feel his neck already prickling with sweat. A thud and a worrying rock of the van at his back announces Will dropping out behind him; he’s by Arthur’s side in moments, fingers obviously thumbing the edge of the gun concealed beneath his shirt. “Difficult to defend,” Will murmurs, squinting into the sunshine, “but it’s definitely better than Marrakesh.” He sighs. “Better go wake Benji, work out where to store Richardson.”

“I’ll do that,” Arthur replies, grabbing his arm. “Get inside and get your head down on the first available surface. You’ve been running on nothing but coffee and processed sugars for thirty-six hours, you need rest or you’re no use to us.”

Will’s mouth tightens, tense with argument, but there’s a sway in his step and a lack of focus in his eyes which betrays how close he is to collapse. “But if anything – ”

“I’ll wake you,” Arthur interrupts sincerely, smiling slightly. “I promise.” Will sends him a long, hot glare, but begrudgingly kicks into movement, drags himself wearily up the finely-cut steps to the large, cool house above them.

Satisfied Will’s inside and at least making a nuisance of himself to Eames, Arthur walks around the van to tug open the back doors in an unpleasant shriek of rusty, ill-kept metal. Benji and Richardson are unmoved from last night, heavily swaddled in blankets at the epicentre of an explosion of cables, wiring, machines and other equipment; Arthur vaults into the van and picks his way across it, hopes that each crunch of his foot isn’t breaking anything too important.

Benji is almost as difficult to rouse as Eames, but at least he doesn’t bitch like a little schoolgirl when he wakes. “We’ve arrived?”

Arthur nods. “Get unloading,” he replies, moving over to Richardson. “I’ll deal with him.” He checks the man’s pulse, breathing, pats him down for broken bones; he’s fine, but Arthur notes the rapid, flicking movement of his eyes beneath his lids. It won’t be long before he wakes; they’ll have to sedate him again, and likely set up a drip for nutrition as well. As much as he’d quite happily leave the man to rot it’s possible they’ll have to trade him for Ethan, and if they do they’ll need him as healthy as he can get.

Eames is lurking on the kerb when he exits the van. “He’s on his way up,” Arthur tells him quietly, glancing around the mostly-deserted street. “He’ll need sedation.”

Eames nods. “I’ve got about half the rooms airing, we shouldn’t need them all. He can go in Tim’s old bedroom. I checked the kitchen; there’s not much there but mould and cockroaches.”

“Benji can deal with that. There’s not much for him to do until we get the van unloaded.”

“And Will?”

“Sleeping,” Arthur replies firmly.

Eames rolls his eyes. “Alright for some,” he mutters archly, but there’s no malevolence in his tone. He quirks an eyebrow, glancing at Arthur. “Which reminds me, what on earth happened in Bangkok?”

Arthur stares at him, thunderstruck. “You were awake,” he seethes, and Eames breaks into a chuckle, smile wide and unashamed. “I should’ve known, no one in the world snores like that – ” He cuts off, remembering the rest of the conversation. “You know, then,” he continues soberly.

Eames watches him in silence. “Yes,” he answers softly. “You do realise we haven’t the numbers to keep him clear of it. If we have to perform an extraction, he will be coming down with us.”

Arthur’s mouth tightens. “I know. Eames – ”

But Eames is gone, striding back towards the house with arms outstretched, smiling broadly at a slightly nervous Benji en route to the van and booming “Benji! Just the man I was hoping to see!” Arthur half-watches the exchange from afar, thick with thought and full of fear. He doesn’t think he has it in him to watch his brother slowly lose his mind.

 

 

 

 

Wakefulness settles gently on Will like a film. Each layer brings with it gradual recollection of the facts; he lies alone on a soft bed in Morocco because Ethan has been taken from him; there is an alien feeling of emptiness against his chest because his totem is gone. He brings his hand to his chest idly, runs his fingers over the spot where it usually lies. Its loss reminds him of a toothache, an ulcer, a split lip; constantly painful in a dull, uncomfortable sort of way.

He drags himself up, kicks his legs over the side and rests his elbows on his knees, scouring his face, pulling steady, even breaths in through his teeth. He still feels utterly exhausted, despite sleeping for what looks like most of the afternoon. He remembers the skyline outside the window, remembers it cresting over the horizon earlier this morning, and though the house he is in is new to him he remembers staggering across the threshold; he remembers the long, silent drive in the rickety, rattling van, passing through Kenitra, deciding to avoid Casablanca, his argument with Arthur; he remembers waking in the high-walled, magnolia hotel room in Marrakesh, Richardson’s form curving across the floor, a slight smile on his face; he remembers – he remembers the bank –

Will stands quickly, pads across to the window and grips the frame tightly to avoid pacing the room like a cage. Outside, the sun is low-slung and honeyed in the purpling sky; early evening approaches, tiny lights flickering on across the city in front of him. The cooling air makes him shiver.

He remembers entering the bank. He remembers waking in the hotel.

He remembers nothing in between.

The crack in his memory leeches his thoughts at the back of his mind, a huge, gaping maw. It all comes back to that moment, an unconquerable wall in the middle of his memory he cannot overcome. He woke up in that hotel room with no knowledge of how he came to be there, right in the middle of things –

– just as one would in a dream.

A knock at the door makes him jump and spin on his heel, fingers itching for the comforting press of a gun – but it’s only Benji, looking weary but jovial and reaching for the light switch on the nearby wall. “Oh, you’re awake. Grub’s up,” he says cheerfully. “Reckoned you might be hungry.”

“Yeah,” Will replies, and grins at him. “Starving, actually.” He sticks to Benji’s side through the elegant, winding hallways, each characterised by dark, wood-panelled walls and a thick plum-coloured carpet more akin to an English stately home than a house in the Moroccan suburbs; this must be a relic of history, an old family estate gathering dust. “How’s the unpacking?”

“Finished ages ago, you slacker. We’ve been washing and cleaning and cooking since, the house hasn’t been used for years by the sounds of it. I feel like a bloody housewife.”

The kitchen is empty, save for a series of rattling pans bubbling over on the hob which Benji rushes to instantly, cursing under his breath. Arthur and Eames occupy the room beside them, sat around an out of place antique mahogany dining table, heads close; Arthur is talking quickly, quietly, gesturing with his hands, whilst Eames sits back to watch, mouth closed and eyebrows tight in concentration. A shock of loneliness barrels through Will at the sight, accompanied by a sting of pain from where his fingernails slice into his palm. In that moment, he desperately misses Ethan. He wants more than anything to curl up small, slide down onto the faux-marble flooring and stay down –

“Will,” Benji says quietly. “Could you give me a hand with this?” Will drags his gaze away.

He helps Benji dole out some rather gigantic portions of couscous and a potent-smelling but undoubtedly delicious stew into what he suspects might be fine-bone china, and between the two of them (and with a few trips) they manage to surround the quietly conspiring couple in the dining room with a ridiculous quantity and selection of food.

“Nice to see you deigned to join us, Will,” Eames remarks with a grin after the muttered conversation with Arthur snaps to an abrupt halt. “You must sleep like the dead to miss the racket these two’ve been making.”

“Would have been quicker with three,” Benji mutters dourly into his food.

Eames at least had the decency to look only slightly affronted. “I supervised!”

Benji snorts. “ _Please_. You couldn’t supervise a blowjob in a brothel.”

“Where’s Richardson?” Will interrupts, and the levity sinks from the air in an instant.

Arthur sets down his fork. “Upstairs,” he replies. “Unconscious. He’s a little dehydrated, so I’ve got him on a drip.”

“Tell me you have something in mind. We don’t have much time.”

Arthur glances uneasily at Eames; the latter remains stoic, but turns his calm, thoughtful eyes to Will. “Extraction would be quickest,” Arthur says hurriedly, as if the idea itself is poisonous, “but Will, you can’t – ”

“How did you decide to counteract his security?”

“Two levels,” Eames replies smoothly. “The key is for him to not realise he’s dreaming. Level one we establish in Marrakesh, make him think any memory of Arthur rampaging into his hotel suite is the product of his subconscious. We set up his day, allow him to think he’s waiting for us to make a move, and when he takes himself to bed that night – ”

“We put him under,” Will interrupts, nodding. “And on level two we perform the extraction. He won’t even think he’s under attack.”

“Hopefully,” Eames adds, and Arthur sends him a sour look.

“Hopefully,” Benji echoes, eyebrow raised. “Well, it sounds about as well thought out as any of the plans you come up with, Will.”

Will ignores him. “How long do you need to set this up?”

Eames shrugs, sucks air through his teeth. “Two, three days at the outset. And we’ll need a Chemist.”

He shakes his head. “They could kill Ethan in that time, especially when they figure Richardson is missing.” Will glances at Arthur. “You know anyone in the area?”

Arthur nods. “One or two. I can fly them in pretty quick. But Will, I don’t think – ”

Will gets to his feet, shoulders square and jaw clenched. “You think of a better idea, you come find me. Otherwise, stop fucking around, and let’s get this done, okay?”

He regrets snapping the second he’s left the room, bitterness cresting like a wave over the anger in his chest. His last conversation with Ethan had been much the same, and the memory of it carves into him every time he thinks of it. Besides, it’s not as if what Arthur had said was far from the truth; he really, really shouldn’t put himself under, not like he is, not like this. Give him three days, access to your standard hardware store and a lot of plastic sheeting and he’s damn sure he could get Ethan’s location out of the man right here, but that’s just the issue; they haven’t got three days. They have no idea what orders Richardson will have given if he himself is kidnapped, what retaliation their actions might have back on Ethan.

Besides, as of tomorrow, Ethan will have been gone for a week. They’ll be lucky to get him back alive at all.

The air in the room seems to turn to water around him, settle thick and heavy in his lungs. He needs to get out, take a walk, clear his head, just find something, _anything_ inside of him he can fall back on, to gather himself, to keep himself strong –

“You can’t go out,” Benji says quietly from behind him just as his fingers brush the handle of the front door, leaning against the ornate staircase which neatly cleaves the hallway in two. “I tried to buy groceries earlier, got chased halfway out the city for my troubles.” He pushes off the rail and comes to a halt at Will’s side. “They’re looking for us.”

Will shakes his head, digs the crux of his hands into his eyes until he sees stars. “I have to get out,” he croaks, holding in a shudder. “I need air.”

“I know,” Benji says softly, and he sounds about as weary as Will feels. It occurs to him then that this is _Benji_ standing in front of him, trapped in a stranger’s house halfway across the world, stranded on the wrong side of the law – and whilst Will practically grew up in this world, he’s certain Benji didn’t. He’s lost his job, his friends, his family, thrown himself into this unfamiliar place – and all just to help Will.

Will looks up at him, his tongue suddenly huge and leaden in his mouth. “Thanks, Benji,” he mumbles thickly, and it sounds damn inadequate in his mouth.

Benji grins. “Can’t be the awesome foursome with three, can you?” He softens a little. “Hey, it’s not like you’d do anything different for us, would you?” Will smiles, shakes his head. “I hope Jane’s okay,” Benji says absently, and a sick, hot guilt thrums through him. He hasn’t even thought about her, what the IMF would think of her –

“She wasn’t even involved,” he says quickly, panic gnawing through him.

Benji rolls his eyes. “Will, the IMF are idiots, but they’re not _that_ idiotic. I was thinking more along the lines that she’s probably have gone half-mad with worry for the rest of us, and if she hadn’t been snatched out of the country she’d be stood right next to you in this hallway. If there’s one thing we know about Jane Carter, it’s that she’s damn well capable of taking care of herself, right?”

Will cracks a smile, rubs his eyes. “Yeah, I guess.” He tugs in a deep, shuddering breath, and Benji’s face creases in sympathy.

“There’s a sort of garden-thing out the back that’s outside at least, even if it’s not far away.”

“That – that sounds good. Thanks, Benji,” he says again, even though it’s laughable, pathetic how little that does everything justice.

Benji shrugs, smiles. “I mean it. Anytime.”

He wanders back in the vague direction of the kitchen, intending to apologise, but Eames and his brother are long gone, presumably disappeared off together into the vast depths of the house. Beyond the window the garden stretches in a dim green expanse, vaguely visible in the dying light, and inviting if only in its solitude.

The night is almost silent from where he walks around the garden, turning circles on the starchy, half-dead lawn; the vague whisper of birdsong, the faraway bubble of a busy road. He breathes the cool air deliberately, tries to counteract the slow, throbbing ache of loneliness inside his chest. He pauses for a moment, closes his eyes, tries to reach into his surroundings, play with what stands around him, shift and twist and bend the axes of the world – but nothing. No great, supernatural change appears, and nor had he expected it to; in reality, such things are impossible, and in a dream, such things are only possible when the participant is assured that they are dreaming. His uncertainty traps him solidly between the two.

He scours his face with his hand, lets out a long, steadying breath. He’s tired. Truth be told, weariness doesn’t even begin to describe it, the stiffness in his bones, the sluggishness behind his eyes – he has nothing to fall back on. He feels entirely empty.

Worst of all, there’s a small part of him that has convinced itself that Ethan is already dead.

The light has gone entirely by the time he turns back to the house, a little recovered from his apathy and resolute on finding Benji and helping in whatever way he can. The thick, tall trees clustering around the garden block even the amber glow from the surrounding city, and he doesn’t spot Eames lurking by the back door until he nearly falls over him, only alerted by the slur of his cigarette lighter flaring against the dark.

He spends a moment forcing his heartbeat down to something close to normal; he’d expected an ambush by Richardson’s henchmen, the IMF, or worse. “Didn’t have you down for a smoker,” he says eventually, his voice remarkably steady.

Eames sends him a shrewd look. “According to your brother, I’m not.”

“Doesn’t seem to stop you.”

“Indeed.” He lets out a long, slow, smoke-wreathed breath. “He’ll forgive me. With anyone else I’d try to hide it, but we keep very little from each other.”

Will bristles. As much as he doesn’t doubt Eames’ wit, charm, overall competence or loyalty to Arthur, every damn thing out of the man’s mouth feels like an insult, and it rubs him up entirely the wrong way. “Adorable,” he mutters, and turns to re-enter the house, but before he can cross the threshold Eames has a grip like a vice on his arm.

“I know this is hell,” he murmurs to him, his fingers tighter than is really necessary and his voice as hard as steel. “I understand. No, don’t look at me like that, I’ve stood where you stand. Arthur hasn’t, so he’s having a harder time comprehending your behaviour. Regardless, it does not excuse you acting like a little shit, not to me or Benji, but certainly not to Arthur, who’s already half driven from his mind for fear of what you’ll do either to yourself or those around you.”

He releases Will’s arm, and Will snatches it back, rubs it roughly with his other hand, seething. He turns back to the door; he’s damn well not going to stand here and let this man beat him down. Eames emits a final slip of smoke and drops the butt onto the stone slab, crunching it under his heel. “Swallow your pride, Will,” he says quietly to Will’s back. “You know I’m right.” Will lets the door shut after him with a loud snap which is, if he’s honest, uncalled for; the bastard is right, and he wants nothing more than to hunt down his brother and apologise.

He finds Arthur sprawled haphazardly across a great mound of his own sketches, his suit and hair inconceivably unruffled. He looks up when Will comes in and smiles, free and unchecked and so open it makes something in Will’s chest catch; he crosses the room in three steps and pulls him into a vicious, tight hug.

“Hey, you okay?” Arthur says in a muffled voice somewhere around his collarbone.

Will pulls away, nods, and ducks his head. “I’m an asshole,” he admits, and Arthur laughs brightly.

“You’ve always been an asshole, Will, you’re my _brother_.” For a moment his smile persists, but then a familiar sour look crosses his face, reminiscent of a thundercloud looming on the horizon. “You don’t smoke,” he mutters, forehead crunching into a frown. “ _Eames_.” He scowls. “I’ll be back in – well, actually, I have a body to bury, so I might be a while.” He sends Arthur a weary look. “You know, sometimes I think he does this just to piss me off.”

Will grins at him. “The thought had crossed my mind.”

 

 

 

 

Their Chemist arrives midway through the morning. She’s no-one Will knows, but he’s been out of the game for far too long to assume his own contacts will still be to hand; besides, he trusts Arthur’s judgement, always has done. Her name is Alex Dutoit; she’s average height, with dark skin, shoulder-length, thin brown hair, a slight limp on her left side and is halfway through her graduate course at the Paris-Sorbonne Université.

“On vacation in Cadiz,” she explains as she shakes his hand, both her Spanish and English pronunciation perfect. “So it was pretty easy for Arthur to twist my arm.” She sends him a wry smile. “I hope you won’t be ruining it for long.”

Arthur shakes his head. “Just a day,” he replies. “Just _today_ , if you can set us up that quick. We’re kind of in a hurry.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Wow, no shit. Okay, you’d best run me through it all. I’ll see what I can do.”

He sits back to allow Arthur and Eames to barter with her; as much as he’s tried to keep up with the field, it seems unlikely he’ll be as on top of it as those two. He spends the time tracing the whorls and breaks in the table top, examining each line and groove as sharply as he can, checking for repetition, for detail. The conversation pauses as Alex rummages in her red leather satchel for pen and paper, flips open a notebook and begins to write her calculations neatly in a deep green ink, pausing every once in a while to ask for clarification; he watches the movement of her fingers, the slide of her pen, is reassured by the alien hand she writes with.

She clips her pen shut. “Seems to me what you want is pretty standard; a sedative steady enough to allow an extraction over two, maybe three levels – ”

“Three?” Will echoes, surprised; they’d been lucky to chance it to two before. Obviously he’s more out of the loop than he thought.

“Oh yes,” Eames replies, smirking. “Your brother dearest even made it to four once, although it did go rather gloriously tits-up after that.” Arthur sends him a sour look, but Eames ignores it, quietly chuckling to himself in malevolent glee at some fond memory.

“Can you do it?” Arthur asks.

She nods. “I’ll need ingredients, and all your measurements, obviously, but it shouldn’t take me more than a couple hours to manufacture what you need. Will you need me on hand?”

“We’re short on numbers, but only whatever you’re comfortable with doing,” Arthur promises. “There’s a lab in the basement – yeah, don’t ask – shall I show you down?”

Will looks over at Eames as the other two depart, eyebrow raised. “Fuck it, I’m asking why. A laboratory? Seriously?”

Eames smiles a truly shit-eating grin. “Uncle Alfred was a great academic,” he replies with a wink, and saunters from the room.

 

 

 

 

They stand around Richardson’s unconscious form, manoeuvred into a high-backed, antique chair; the thick rich sunlight presses hotly against their backs. A PASIV lies open on the floor, vomiting tangled nests of cables; Alex squats in the midst of them, tongue between her teeth; Eames and Benji are off to one side, engaged in what appears to be amiable banter; Arthur stands alone, eyes closed, face trapped in concentration.

Will stares down at the PASIV in silence, a cold, thick dread curling around his gut. He does not want to go under. Even as he stands here, now, he feels as if he holds onto his very sanity by the skin of his teeth, already entirely uncertain as to whether he can believe this world is real – to throw off his balance further, force himself to enter yet another dream, and he might never believe he’s woken up again.

He might never wake up again.

He holds back a shiver as Alex straightens up, her expression serious but somewhat cheerful. “We’re good to go,” she says, fetching up an IV from the spaghetti-like pile strewn across the floor and sliding it into Richardson’s motionless arm. They take up their positions around him, and are each passed an IV by Alex, who in turn takes her place in the final chair. Benji sits crosslegged beside the PASIV with an amicable smile on his face, waiting for them all to settle.

“He’s been sleeping dreamlessly for some time,” Eames reminds them, wriggling in his chair to get comfortable. “So expect everything to be a little... bright.”

“Ready?” Benji asks, glancing between them. Arthur nods, and Benji presses the button. “See you in a while,” he says softly, and Will’s world bubbles and melts into a deep, dark black.


	4. Chapter 4

Will is alone when he opens his eyes. The room is strange to him, but the building characteristically Moroccan, and when he turns towards the window he spies the familiar skyline of Marrakesh. He searches the room to recover what Arthur’s given him (a gun, but no comms), nudges the unlocked door ajar with his foot and slips silently into the empty corridor beyond.

He understands what Eames meant by _bright_ the moment he crosses the threshold; the outside world strikes his senses with an overwhelming force, the already-vibrant city intensified in every way until he almost feels drugged. Despite the momentary surprise, it’s actually a relief; there’s no danger of him mistaking this for reality. He just hopes the same doesn’t go for Richardson. He pauses for a moment to get his bearings, drinking in the warm, heavy sunlight, and then heads east, as planned.

He passes ghostlike through the crowds, unheeded; the projections pay him no notice, save for a handful of persistent stallholders who accost him as they do every passerby. He wanders silently between them, waiting patiently for Arthur’s sign – and there, above a fruit stall, a Greek sigma etched in blue paint. He approaches slowly, takes his time running his eyes up and down the produce until he spots the tin soldier leaning casually against a box of dates.

He smiles to himself as he gives a handful of money to the suspicious cashier. With handiwork like this, Arthur would fit right in at the IMF.

The bottom of the box conceals a small, foil parcel, which in turn contains a tiny plastic earpiece. There are a few seconds of silence after he slips it in, and then a _whoosh_ of static closely followed by Arthur’s calm voice. _“Nice of you to join us. Location?”_

He pauses at a busy road, focused on the traffic. “Heading south from the Djemaa El-Fna.”

_“I see you. Alex is in a café two blocks east.”_

“Understood.”

It doesn’t take much time to locate the café in question; it stands distinct along the roadside, with gaudy orange umbrellas and uncomfortable-looking seats in a wonderfully clashing dark green plastic. Alex has taken over one of the smaller tables, her eyes on the road, idly sipping at something in a thin, china cup before her. “Excuse me, ma’am, is this seat taken?”

She smiles up at him. “Not at all.”

He takes the seat to her left; it bugs him to choose between having his back to the street or the café, but decides on the latter. “Progress?”

“Arthur’s giving him a few nudges,” she replies. “But mostly he’s taken control. It seems to be ticking over nicely.” She finishes her sweet mint tea and relaxes back in her chair, face tipped up to catch the sun. Time holds no meaning in Richardson’s mind, and Will has always found this simple fact the most enchanting aspect of dreamsharing; that one can spend a lifetime in here with someone, and mere moments will have passed when you open your eyes. With Richardson, his impatience and frustration manifests in the way the sun hurtles through the sky; it’s already almost midday. With any other mark they’d keep such a progression in check, but here they need it to be night time sooner rather than later. “I’ve never been to Marrakesh,” she adds.

“Arthur’s done a good job.”

“Mmm. It’s been on my list a while. I’m writing my thesis on Phoenician trade routes. I’d go wander round the museums, but somehow I doubt Arthur’s been _that_ thorough.”

Will glances at her. “You’re a historian?”

She grins. “That surprises you? Yeah, Chemistry’s just been a hobby of mine from – well, a long while back, I guess, but being the idiot I went for the careerless profession. I met Arthur at uni in Paris, and he – ” She smirks. “Shall we say, redirected my interests?”

Will chuckles. “You wouldn’t be the first.”

The base of the sun is already brushing the rooftops; it’s three, maybe four, at a guess. “I’ve never seen anyone’s mind move so fast,” Alex says quietly, eyebrow raised. “He’s certainly impatient for something.”

“Let’s hope it’s not caused by us.” He reaches into his pocket and tugs out his wallet, dropping a handful of change onto the table. “We should move. If he keeps this up, we’ll need to be in position soon.”

They walk in silence through the narrow, winding streets. Around them, shopkeepers close their stalls and strip down their stock as bars and restaurants come to life, open their doors and begin to quarrel with the noisier, more obstinate punters. They hear smatterings of Russian, Japanese, Croatian in amongst the French and Arabic; Will listens with interest, hoping to pick up a stray thought, but it’s too infrequent and too random for him to make out anything of use.

They have put the majority of the Parc Lalla Hasna to their backs just as Will hears a hot, angry chirrup of static in his ear; he grabs hold of Alex’s arm, pulls her down onto a nearby bench. “Arthur,” he explains in a murmur, moving in close; he can’t be seen to be talking to himself like a madman. As they sit in silence, waiting for orders, something morphing and shifting on the bench beside them catches his eye; a graffito has wriggled into life in the woodwork, just by Alex’s right thigh.

“I see it,” she says softly, and moves slightly aside to let them read. It’s in a language Will doesn’t know, which is saying something; “Phoenician,” Alex explains with a smile when she catches his slightly panicked expression. “If you give me time, I’ll tell you what it says. It’s always harder to read in a dream.”

“And my brother knows how to write in ancient Phoenician _how_ exactly?”

She grins as she leans down to peer closer, scooping her hair into a loose cluster by her neck. “I’m sure I’ve no idea, but I can tell you his syntax is awful.”

“I blame the teacher,” Will replies, deadpan. If Arthur can’t use the comms, then he’s somewhere he can’t speak – presumably in earshot of Richardson, and definitely on his own. His stomach tightens; as much as he knows Arthur’s no imbecile, he’s liking this situation less and less.

Alex straightens up, satisfied. “Richardson’s en route to the hotel. He called ahead to order room service, so Eames is spiking the proverbial punch as we speak.”

Will nods. “We need to move.”

They’re a block shy of Richardson’s hotel when the sun spikes its final flash across the horizon. Darkness drops like a stone across the city’s sky, transformed from day to night in a heartbeat, and every single projection stops and turns to them. “He’s taken the sedative,” Alex whispers at his side; she sounds frightened, but holds herself perfectly still. “They’ve noticed something’s wrong.” Will scans the surrounding faces, body tense; they’re all impassive, no sign of malice yet, but are focused on them nonetheless. “Will, what do we – ?”

As quickly as it had come, it slides away once more; around them, the crowds resume their steady flow, caught up in their own activities, driven by whatever Richardson’s subconscious wishes for them. They share a quick, relieved look and slip back into the crowd, and although their journey is somewhat impeded by rough, angry jostles by the projections walking the other way where before their progress had been smooth and unhindered, there’s no snap in Richardson’s mind, no bloodthirsty mob hot on their heels – yet.

“We gotta get a move on,” Will mutters the moment they’re through the door to Richardson’s room, locking it tight and jamming the nearby furniture under the handle for good measure. “They know something’s up. The sedative set them off.”

Arthur nods tightly. “We should only need a few minutes.” He glances at Eames, crouched down beside Richardson, IV in hand, PASIV by his feet. “Ready?”

“As we’ll ever be.”

They settle themselves around Richardson once more, take care to make themselves comfortable, sprawled almost exactly as they were before; the glimmer of déjà vu makes Will shiver. He takes a moment to study the contours of Arthur’s face, feel the rough, plastic carpet against his fingertips, remind himself he’s going in deep, and then he feels the bite of the chemical through his system and his eyes slide shut.

 

 

 

 

Alex shakes him awake, her mouth a grim line. Outside the window, the air ripples and shivers in the early stages of thunderstorm; a reflection of Richardson’s suspicion. They haven’t much time. He crosses to the window as a faint swell of music rings out; the bell in the church tower takes up its toll, a palpably ominous sound in the still, pregnant air.

“Which of you knows the way?” Alex asks.

“I do,” Eames replies. “Richardson’s in the church on the other side of town; I’ll lead you there and then go to him.”

Together they descend the tiny, rickety staircase and emerge onto a half-cobbled, half-paved street. Will stares around, baffled; if it weren’t for the smattering of harried pedestrians obviously in modern garb weaving about the empty, winding streets he’d think himself back in time. A tug on his arm and they’re on the move again, and Will is forced to commit his mind to remembering the route – the place has been designed as deliberately difficult to navigate, either in real life or by Arthur, renowned for his particularly meticulous style.

Eames halts them outside a nondescript red-brick building, the likes of which they’ve passed dozens of; a butter-yellow stone plaque to the right of the door reads _Town Library_ , as you might find in a children’s book. “You’ve got an hour,” Eames tells them, eyes on the sky, heavy with cloud. He looks to Will, his eyes hard. “Make it quick and clean. I’ll meet you back where we began.”

And with that he stalks off, face trapped in a scowl. Will bites back a smile, wonders whether Arthur knows how bitchy Eames is the moment he’s on his own; Alex glances at Will, mouth curved in similar amusement. “Shall we?” she asks, and together they ascend the smooth, marble steps into the hall beyond.

The room is lined with a dark, oak panel and the tiles are crisp and patterned in black and white; the choice of décor reminds him rather of Eames’ house, and Will wonders whether he had a hand in this particular design. An elderly woman sits behind a tall desk fashioned in the same heavy wood as the walls around it. Her silver hair is wrenched into a viciously tight bun balanced precariously atop her head, and a monocle is trapped against her eye as she pores over a thick book bound in blood-red leather. “I’m looking for a book,” Will murmurs in a carefully hushed tone. “Is there a catalogue I can search?”

She lets out a light, feathery sigh. “I am the catalogue, dear,” she replies, still engrossed in her book. “What is the author’s name?”

Will glances at Alex, whose face is calm but her eyes are bright with fear. Christ, talk about taking the bull by the horns. He clears his throat, and says as calmly as he can; “Hunt. Ethan Hunt.”

There’s a long, low boom of thunder from outside, so loud it rattles the panes; Will nearly dives to the floor, his nerves wracked. The librarian raises her head and stares straight at him, straight _through_ him with her watery green eyes, and they’re stood there for so long he’s sure their cover’s blown – and then she lowers it once more, reaches out a tiny, fragile hand and writes a number for them in copperplate.

“First floor,” she adds as she slides it across the desk, already more bored with them than her book. “Reference only.”

Will saves his huff of relief until they’re climbing the stairs two at a time, his heart still pounding fiercely. Outside the weather has descended into anarchy; the clouds have burst, pelting the town with thick sheets of rain, drops of water flinging themselves at every window they pass with something akin to malevolence. “I hope Eames is inside,” Alex mutters, grinning. “I doubt he’d thank us if he got stuck in this.”

They nudge open the door to the first floor and slip through; the room is silent and mostly unoccupied. They gather a few interested glances from the readers scattered to either side on entry, but nothing more. “The eight hundreds are this way,” Will deciphers from the neat, bronze signs erected near the doorway, squinting at the numbers; they seem to shift under his sight, as if reluctant to tell him with what he needs to know.

Will’s pulse quickens with every step they take between the winding bookshelves, towering above them; he finds himself steadying his arm each time he glances down to check and check again the neat, black script, the soft cream paper half-crumpled in his tense hand. “Eight fifty to eight fifty-three,” Alex says softly, grabbing his arm and pointing down the nearest row. “It’s here.”

She slides the paper from between his fingers and moves down the aisle, running her hands along the spines. He watches her with his heart in his throat, barely able to breathe – and she stops, her fingers curl around a single volume and tug it free of its companions. It’s small – a handspan in height, he reckons, not much more – and bound in a sand-coloured canvas; it looks nearly new. She returns to him in silence and hands it over.

It feels heavier than it should, but he thinks that might just be because of the sudden weakness in his wrists. He runs his fingers down the spine, suddenly hesitant to open it as if he’s preying on Ethan’s privacy somehow, but Alex nudges him nervously, her lip caught between her teeth and her eyes on the time. He flips open the cover and runs his eyes down the neatly printed page. No contents, no index, but it should be easy enough to find what they need – he flips to the end and lets the pages fall back between his fingers, scanning for the last page with text.

A _crack!_ of lightning splits the air outside, and Will turns his eyes to the page to see Ethan lying dead on a concrete floor.

He drops it, his fingers numb, his legs as good as dead as he falls back against the bookcase, pulls in quick, heaving breaths through his nose. _It’s not true_ , he thinks desperately, his eyes tight shut, _not true not true not true –_

“Will,” Alex says softly, her voice swimming with sharp, painful sympathy, and he wants to run, wants to wake up and _run_ until he frees the tightness in his chest – “Will, I’m so sorry.”

He opens his eyes. The book lies open in her hand, the full-page, glossy image unchanged; the bullet hole even cleaves neatly between Ethan’s eyes, just as it had – as it had in the video. He takes it from her wordlessly, flips the page over – nothing. The rest are blank, until the very end.

Ethan’s dead. He’s been dead since day one.

Will is alone.

He pockets it. They have to rendez-vous with Eames in twenty, and it’ll take them that long to find the damn house again. It lies heavily across his chest, a malicious facsimile of his totem, and though it really weighs next to nothing he feels as if every step will be his last, each lift and drop of his leg taking more effort than he has to give.

Outside, the weather has calmed; the rain has slowed to drizzle. He trusts Alex to guide them, falls in step behind her and falls back on instinct, a cold, dry numbness seeping through his mind. He thinks of Arthur’s wary face, back in the hotel room in Marrakesh, of the week stretching out behind him since he knew for _sure_ that Ethan was still with them. He thinks of home, of the job he’s lost, of the friends he’ll never see again, of a life without –

He scours his face, holds back a shudder. He’d been so certain Ethan was alive.

He comes to a halt so suddenly his feet slide a little across the slippery cobblestones. There’s something wrong, something he can’t put his finger on, something in the air, giving him hope – and the thing about dreamsharing is it’s as much about the fabric of the dream, the taste and texture and smell and _feeling_ as the architecture, the people, the places. Transforming a dream into a nightmare can be a simple matter of mood – and the mood here is somehow... satisfied. Smug, even. He pulls the book out of his pocket and flips through it, his heart suddenly racing.

“Will,” Alex says sharply from up ahead, body tense. “We need to get back in position.”

“Can you feel it?” he asks urgently, striding quickly across the street and grabbing her arm; she stares back at him, baffled. “ _There_ , in the air, it’s everywhere – ”

“You’re not making sense, Will – look, I’m sorry about Ethan, but we _need_ – ”

But Will’s already running in the wrong direction, heart thick in his throat. The church, Eames had said, and there it is, looming up against the horizon, conspicuously squat against the lightening sky; he has no idea of the way but keeps his eyes locked on its roof, hurtles along the empty streets as quick as his feet can carry him, comforted by the fact that at every turn, every bend it grows a little closer. It takes three streets for Alex to catch up with him, and she does so in spectacular fashion, bringing her arm down on his shoulder hard enough to send him to his knees, swearing loudly – “Fucking _idiot_ ,” she snaps, and kicks his calf for good measure. “What the hell is wrong with you?!”

“He’s playing us,” Will says as calmly as he can, heaving himself back to his feet and rolling some of the pain from his shoulder. He glances at his watch; ten minutes to rendez-vous. Eames will be leaving soon. He sets off for the church once more – so close, he’s sure of it – and he hears Alex’s steps behind him, hard against the flagstones.

“If it weren’t for where it’d send you, I’d shoot you where you damn well stand,” she snarls, moving to block his path; he tries to push her aside, but she’s stronger than she seems, and stays well put. “God damn it, Will, where are you even going?!”

“Eames,” he says, but less as a reply to her than as a rush of relief at the sight of Eames walking their way, his face tight.

“This had better be good,” Eames mutters once they’re in earshot, eyes on his watch. “What did you find in the library?”

“He’s dead,” Alex says angrily, her temper blown, “but Will – ”

“He’s _not_ ,” Will interrupts, snarling. “Eames, listen to me – that storm, the air, I think – ”

Eames sends him a sharp look. “Make sense, Will, or I’m walking away now.”

Will takes a moment, sucks in a deep, long breath through his teeth, tries to get his thoughts in order. “I think he’s playing us,” he says eventually, voice as steady as he can force it to be. “I think we’re seeing Ethan dead on these pages because it’s what he _wants_ us – me – to see, to believe. I think – ”

“He’s corrupted the extraction,” Eames interrupts, brow creased in thought. “Tricky, but – ”

“ – plausible,” Alex finishes, nodding. “He knew we were coming,” she adds slowly. “And he knew what we wanted to know. That takes some damn good security, though.”

Will shrugs. “After last time, he’ll have the best.” Alex frowns; she’s obviously unaware of all the details.

Eames’ sharp eyes are trained on Will. “You want to go deeper,” he says quietly. “To try again.”

“He won’t expect it.”

Alex snorts. “That’s because it’s idiotic. We don’t have another level, and we certainly don’t have time to design one now.”

Eames ignores this, begins walking quickly in the direction he came from; Alex and Will follow, struggling to keep up. “Will the sedative hold three?” he asks.

She pulls in a deep, steady breath. “Maybe,” she replies, shaking her head. “But if there’s even the slightest tremor on this level – ”

“You designed a third level,” Will realises, eyebrows raised. “Did you see this coming?”

Eames shrugs. “In my experience, two is never enough for a sound extraction. Call it paranoia, and definitely blame your brother. If your sedative will hold it, my dear, we’ll only need a few minutes. We have time.”

“I guess,” Alex mutters, rubbing her eyes. “Where’s Richardson?”

“Right where I left him, happily snoring by the altar. There’s a PASIV hidden under the font.”

“Six minutes ‘til the kick,” Will says, staring at his watch. “With the time transfer, that’s enough.”

Eames nods. “Just about.”

The church door looms above them, propped open against the windy weather by a heavy slab of marble fashioned into an ugly-looking cherub; Will eyes its bulging cheeks and pudgy, glistening smile with distaste. The hall itself is empty, the décor as miserably British as the town around them; all high-vaulted ceilings, dark wooden pews and dull, stained-glass windows, every inch decorated with some message of doom and gloom ripped straight from a Bible verse. Will clacks up the aisle as quietly as he can on the hard, noisy stone, and wonders whether it’s more a reflection of Eames’ mind or Richardson’s. Alex is close behind him, PASIV retrieved from the font and clutched tightly in one hand – she’s nervous, he can tell. He doesn’t blame her; this is in no way what she signed up for.

Richardson sits slumped across the final pew, head lolling against his chest. He looks smug even here, and Will has to hold himself back, fingers twitching into fists at his sides as he thinks of the book lying heavily against his chest. If it is true, if the man that lies before him is the man who put a bullet into Ethan Hunt’s skull, Will’s not sure what he’ll do when he wakes up. He’s damn certain he won’t be sorry.

Alex places the PASIV on the floor, hands up a line to Will as Eames manoeuvres the pew onto a rest, tilting it back a little, setting up their kick. He focuses on the prick of the needle in his arm, the slow ache in the protesting muscle around it, the tiniest blossom of blood, pulls a breath in through his nose. He counts the levels back in his head, considers the texture of the air, thick and unwilling around him, Arthur’s face on the level above, forces himself to keep control. Eames sits to Richardson’s left; Will takes the spot to the right, loosens his limbs, making sure he has somewhere comfortable to fall on when the kick shocks him back awake.

Alex looks between the three of them, stares at Will long and hard, her mouth a thin, grim line; she’s clearly battling with her conscience, full of second thoughts. “This is a terrible idea,” she reiterates, shaking her head.

“Duly noted,” Eames murmurs, settling back against the bench and closing his eyes. “Press the button, please. Four minutes should be more than enough.”

Will keeps his eyes open, watches the pull and push of her fingers against the PASIV, rummaging in its interior for the headset. He watches the way the filtered sunlight catches her hair, counts the sequins along the collar of her red cotton t-shirt; he makes it to twenty-three before he’s finally dragged under.

 

 

 

 

The house they stand in is similar to the one in the level above; plain, inescapably British, walls a dull sort of grey, the same shade as the sky they see outside. Beside him, Eames morphs in a ripple from himself to a small, young woman, her blonde hair falling in two loose plaits about her face, her clothes somewhere between maternal and matronly; could be mother, more likely nanny. “What are we looking for?” he asks him.

“Something secret. I’ve brought him back here, right back – so think like a child, monsters in the closet, that kind of thing.” There’s a long, high-pitched wail so sharp it rattles the windows; somewhere nearby, Richardson is crying. Eames glances toward the door. “I’ll keep him occupied, you find what we need.”

He follows him out into the hall; simple, boring, plain, ordinary, more grey, everything tangibly dull, half-remembered. London, he guesses from the view outside the window; red buses, a clutter of cabs and cars filling the road, angry drivers, pedestrians lacklustre with their road safety. He walks quietly down the landing, nudges open each door with the tip of his foot – spare bedroom, a light green, few details; parents’ room, a deep, bright yellow, a taste of softness in the air, of fondness; bathroom, clinical, a stack of boring-looking magazines carefully propped up against the window pane.

He reaches the last door on the landing. It’s white, no different to the others, but a little more battered, and each detail carefully remembered with a fond child’s precision; there are whispers of stickers pressed on and ripped off, paint scuffed around the edges from where it’s been slammed mid-tantrum. He’s surprised not to find a plaque with Richardson’s name – Will had something like that, and Arthur, too, because Arthur tended to want whatever he’d got. The housekeeper probably wouldn’t stand for it, which could explain the vanishing stickers, too. He nudges it open, hears a creak in both the hinges and the floorboard beneath his feet; familiar sounds, resonant with well-remembered memories, endless nights of diving under the covers, stuffing a flashlight hastily out of sight.

The warm blue room is an explosion of memories; every corner is secreted with half-forgotten toys, partly broken, chucked aside with every new fad, each fit of pique, but never thrown out, never forgotten – not here, at least. He takes care not to move what he can avoid as he steps into the middle, breathes in the silent air. He glances around the room, thinking furiously. In his room back home – in the first house they’d lived in – there had been a loose floorboard, and he’d used that when he had something to hide, but here the floor is covered right to the edges in a soft, thick carpet; neither is there any handy panelling, any access into the walls where something could be shoved away. There’s no fireplace or mantelpiece, each of which would have a thousand places to secrete something. He strips the duvet from the bed, runs his fingers between the cool pillowcase and the sheet, checks in the gap between the wall, but no luck there either; neither is there anything in the chest of drawers, or as far as he can tell, no easily reached compartment, nothing shoved near the back amidst the nest of too-small, mismatched socks.

His eyes fall on the wardrobe. _Monsters in the closet_ , he thinks. He’d never hidden anything in his wardrobe, but Arthur had stashed some far from intellectual magazines down there when they were both hitting their late teens; they were never sure whether their mother ever found them. He picks his way across the littered floor and tugs open the pale wooden door, the blue paint chipped and rough beneath his fingers – often opened in haste, then; a good sign. Mostly lower down than his hand, too, so more likely Richardson than anyone else. He pushes aside the slightly musty clothes and gets smacked in the face with a wave of mothball odour for his trouble. He half-expects to find Narnia hiding at the back somewhere; god knows the whole situation is bizarre enough as it is. There are a few jumbled bags of toys beyond repair, but nothing obviously concealed –

 _There_. Behind the final bag sits a shoebox, neatly hidden amongst the mountain of other things.

It’s light, the cardboard well-thumbed and butter-soft against his fingers; frequently handled, and by smaller hands than Will’s large adult ones. He feels his heart begin to race as he flips open the lid, his mouth dry; there’s a piece of paper balanced across the top of it, _KEEP OUT!_ written in an angry, childish script, luminous red crayon still easy to smudge under his fingertips. On the edge of his hearing he catches a faint, tinny tune – Piaf. It makes his stomach squirm. He’s running out of time.

Will pushes the paper aside to find an unmarked VHS tape nestled in amongst a random clutter of objects, small, secret things which hold no meaning to him. He picks up the tape, checks each side, but there’s no hint of what it is. He’d spotted a tiny TV on the other side of the room, though, piled precariously on top of a sleek black video player, surrounded by tottering towers of kids’ movies. He considers shouting for Eames, but decides the guy’s probably got his hands full with Richardson. He pushes the tape in with a _click_ , feels it get sucked from between his fingers, gives the machine a moment to think, and presses play.

The screen jumps and flickers, blocked with angry black-and-white lines of static – Christ, he’s not nostalgic over _this_ technology. The IMF is particularly keen on glossy, slick gadgets, and it sometimes takes him a moment to remember that in the real world things aren’t always so unavoidably hi-tech. It finally focuses on a tall, crumbling building; red brick, the narrow windows broken and boarded, and it’s somehow achingly familiar to Will. He frowns, shakes his head – if he knows it, it’ll come to him. It zooms suddenly towards one of the boarded doors which, on investigation, is actually only tactfully propped shut; they enter, rush down winding corridors with half-flashing lights and mouldy patches of damp, push through a sequence of doors, each painted blue, peeling at the edges.

The pace slows as they reach what he assumes to be the final door; a pale hand emerges to push it open, small, a child’s hand. The room beyond is white in both its walls and ceiling, and for a moment Will thinks himself back in Marrakesh, has to hold back a shiver – but this room is above-ground; there’s a large window to his right, boarded up but still showing a slit of dark, star-smattered sky.

The observer turns, and across the room on a rickety metal cot lies Ethan Hunt, wonderfully, beautifully, definitely _alive_.

 

 

 

 

Will gasps awake, pulls in shocked, rapid breaths of still, hot air. The room is filled with warm Moroccan sunlight, still in the peak of afternoon – _minutes since they went under_ , he thinks, scouring his face with his hand, _just a few fucking minutes_. Across the room, Eames is bent over Arthur, murmuring something Will can’t make out, his fingers tugging free his IV with a familiar motion, the half-smile on Arthur’s face echoed on his own; Eames leans down and Will looks away, fights a flush, feeling as if he’s stumbled on something achingly private.

Alex sits up next to him, yawning hugely and rubbing at her eyes. “Did you find him?” Benji asks, fingers curling around Will’s IV gently.

For a moment, Will can’t work out what he means; then the half-remembered dream blooms something warm in Will’s chest, sends tingles up and down his spine. “Yeah,” he replies. He smiles beatifically. “He’s okay. Ethan’s okay.”


	5. Chapter 5

Dusk is settling across the Moroccan skyline when Alex walks out the door. Will watches her from the bedroom window, wedged up against the high, white-painted sash window; she’d come up to say goodbye not long ago, looking damn pleased to get rid of them.

“You’ll find him,” she’d said with a smile, hugging him before pulling back to swiftly deliver a dead arm. “I don’t even need to wish you luck.”

He watches from the window until the blood-red specks of the taxi’s lights turn the corner. Across the room, Richardson lies unconscious on the antique four-poster bed, though not from sedation; they haven’t administered anything for a long while now. They are waiting for him to wake up, and if he’s honest, Will has no idea what he’ll do to the man when he does.

Footsteps in the hallway anticipate a soft knock on the door; Benji, Will judges, evidently carrying something heavy or awkward by the way he struggles with the handle. Sure enough, after a few moments of clattering and fumbling the door swings open to reveal Benji clutching a tray the size of a table, practically groaning with food; he staggers slightly as he enters, setting it down with evident relief on a low-slung writing desk a few feet away from Will.

“Felt I was playing gooseberry downstairs so I thought I’d come join you,” Benji says amiably, sitting down on the floor and helping himself with relish to the heaped mound of food. “Christ, I feel like I haven’t eaten for a week. Bloody nerve-racking stuff, this dreamsharing business.”

Will can’t help but crack a smile; he swings out from the window and grabs his own plate. “You didn’t even go under, Benji,” he reminds him, dropping to the thickly carpeted floor at his side. “You sat and watched us for less than twenty minutes and spent the rest of the day glued to a computer screen.”

“It was a very stressful twenty minutes!” Benji protests, mouth half-full with food; Will decides it’s easier not to argue with him. “Not sure Ethan’d like it, though,” he adds after he’s swallowed, much to Will’s relief. “Lots of lying about and no jumping off tall buildings.”

Will snorts. “Are you kidding me? Ethan would _love_ it. He could jump off all the tall buildings he liked and it wouldn’t even matter if he hit the ground.”

Benji nods. “Point. Although I’m pretty sure your idiotic boyfriend has one hell of a suicidal streak and only does these things _because_ it matters if he hits the ground.” He glances over at him curiously. “Why did you stop?”

Will shrugs. “I hated working on the bad side of the law, I guess. I didn’t feel like I was doing any good, even when we ripped the shit out of rich assholes like Richardson – I wanted to be something better. The IMF approached me, promised to wipe my slate clean, and I took my out. Arthur – ” He laughs, shakes his head. “We didn’t even argue. Had a real passive-aggressive conversation about it, then I just walked out one day, and we... stopped talking.”

He quietens, his expression sobering. “I missed him. He’s my kid brother, and once our parents passed he was my responsibility. I used to check up on him every once in a while, but I’d only ever get a few words in response – “I’m okay”, “still alive”, that kind of thing. I mean, I knew I could count on him if it mattered, but that wasn’t what I wanted, you know?”

Benji watches him in silence. “You seem okay now,” he says, after a while.

Will grins. “Yeah,” he agrees, still smiling. “If there’s one good thing to come out of this whole clusterfuck, seeing Arthur again is definitely it.”

Benji attempts to place his plate precariously on top of a teetering pile of empty bowls, tongue between his teeth, an adorably intense look of concentration on his face. “Well,” he says slowly, attention on his balancing act, “unless your idea of topping off a joyous reunion is walking in on him and Eames at it like rabbits, I suggest you forgo brotherly conversation for the evening.”

Will chuckles. “Jesus, there’s an image I didn’t need. Thanks for the warning.”

Benji snorts. “Please. Like you and Ethan are any better. I dread to think what you’ll be like when you’re back in a room with him, we’ll have to quarantine the both of you.” He pauses at the look on Will’s face. “Have you remembered anything?” he asks quietly.

Will sighs, long and hard, pushing aside his own half-empty plate. “No,” he mutters. “It’s – hard, remembering things from a dream, but I spent years of my life training my mind how to do it. I’ve just never been in that deep before.” He scours his face in his hand. “It’ll come to me, I _know_ it will, but – the waiting, it’s almost worse than it was before, you know? We’re all waiting on me.” He snorts. “If it takes much longer our best chance is probably to extract it from my own mind.”

He’s interrupted by a snuffle from Richardson, a quiet moan, a rasping shift of limbs; he’s rising from the deepest parts of unconsciousness, no longer lying immobile and deathlike across the silken bedspread. “How long before he wakes up?” Benji asks.

Will shrugs. “Arthur reckons a couple hours or so – it depends on how he was sleeping before we caught him, how he’s reacted to the drip and the drugs, a whole heap of things. It’s not like we’re on a tight schedule.”

They fall into silence, more from Will’s weariness than anything else. It’s been a ridiculously long day, even if mentally rather than physically; and as much as discovering Ethan’s (relative) safety has done wonders for recharging his batteries there’s only so long Will can keep the consequences of irregular meals and sleep deprivation at bay. He’d like to say he’ll sleep easier knowing Ethan is alive somewhere, but he’s pretty sure that information will eat into his consciousness, red hot and raw, remind him constantly that he should be kicking down doors until he finds the one Ethan’s trapped behind.

The misery in his mind thickens. Jane is quick and strong, and a brilliant tactician; Ethan is brave to the point of suicide; Benji’s genius-level intellect allows him an unparalleled affinity with technology; and Will _remembers_ things. Will can stand in front of a guy and tell you his name, date of birth, social security number, where he grew up, when and why his parents died, even all the presents he got on his eleventh birthday. Ethan’s life is riding on some memory trapped inside his mind from a half-remembered dream, and he can’t access it. It’s debilitating.

He sucks in a deep, slow breath. It’s been a long, _long_ day, and an even longer week. He runs his tired eyes along the patterned cornice imprinted around the room; small, subtle patterns, chiselled with time and care by a steady hand. He’d wanted to do something like that on the landing, he remembers; but Ethan hadn’t liked it, called it old, out of fashion, unused. He remembers how he’d looked in that moment, his attention only half on Will, more focused on the reports spread-eagled on the table in front of him; he remembers the way it had irritated him, the anger that had curled around his gut.

He closes his eyes. He thinks he’d throw away everything he has with Ethan Hunt in a heartbeat just to know the man was safe again.

“I’ve been trying to think of a way to get a message to Jane,” Benji continues conversationally, picking up Will’s fork and making a start on his untouched pasta; Will looks across at him, tries to bring his mind back to the here and now. “Figured getting access to the IMF databases would actually be pretty handy. ‘Course, I know my way round the system like the back of my hand, but I didn’t think hacking into it would look all that great when we have to write this whole damn thing up.” He snorts, shaking his head. “Christ, have you thought about the paperwork? I mean, do you remember the fallout from Munich? I had to write fifty-three pages, and that was just on that day we parachuted into the Allianz Arena. _Fifty-three_. Seriously, I don’t think I can handle that again – ”

Will watches him talk, enjoying the scorn Benji dumps unceremoniously on their HR department, the outright indignation on his face at the thought of their reception after having casually saved the world yet again. He thinks absently of the unopened tins of paint he’d placed either side of the hall before they’d left in preparation for their return; how it had taken him and Ethan weeks to decide to go with blue, and further days of arguing over whether the low-slung hall ceiling would benefit more from _ocean ripple_ or _first frost_.

The memory hits him suddenly, like a suckerpunch – he feels his back snap up ramrod straight as he pulls in a shocked breath between clenched teeth. He can vaguely hears Benji asking after his wellbeing, but it’s faded, small, far away. “The door was blue,” Will says firmly as his eyes lose their focus, turning inwards, scouring his mind. “The paint peeling up around the edges – ” He gestures vaguely with his hand, marking out the line of the doorframe. “The building was old, disused, the windows, you couldn’t see through them – ” He jams his thumbs into his eyes, thinking furiously as his vision bursts with purple stars. It’s like having a name on the tip of your tongue, a fact skipping around the edges of your mind, but worse, a thousand times worse –

Running. Something about running. But Will didn’t run, hardly ever did, preferred anything and everything else to keep him fit – Ethan took him once, but he’d hated every second of it. They hadn’t even planned a route, he remembers, just picked a direction and ran until they bit the horizon –

“Vienna,” he says, the memory hitting him in a rush, flooding every nerve with bright relief. Red brick, huge, deserted, he remembers the thick taste of brick dust on his tongue; they’d only paused for breath, and when he says ‘they’ he means him – Ethan could have powered on through, the crazy fucker.

“Austria?” Benji asks, eyebrows sky-high.

“Virginia,” Will corrects, getting to his feet, his brain sparking into gear.

Benji groans. “Oh, you have got to be joking me. Regardless of the fact we have zero chance of getting back stateside, we will literally be strolling into the IMF’s back yard. Will – ” His hand shoots out, clamps tightly around Will’s lower arm. “Will, we’ve only made it this far because we’ve had Richardson holding our hand on one side and keeping the IMF at bay on the other. The second we leave this house we are up against the IMF and entirely on our own.”

Will looks down at him coldly. “So what would you have me do?”

Benji sighs, letting go of his arm. “Be careful,” he mutters, shaking his head. “I know you think the end’s in sight – and it is, but if we fuck this up – ”

“You think I don’t know that?” Will interrupts, seething, hardly in the mood for a lecture – but his rage fizzles out of him the moment he sees Benji deflate, his look of weary concern crumple in on itself. “I’m sorry, Benji,” he mumbles, eyes on the floor.

“It’s fine,” he replies coolly, and it makes Will’s stomach squirm; no easy reconciliation with a slick apology this time round. “It’s been a long day.”

“Yeah,” Will breathes, huffing out a sigh. He glances across to the bed, catches his lip between his teeth. He should sleep, he’s exhausted, but –

“Will,” Benji says sharply, and Will shakes himself, looks back over to him. “I’ve sat with you through a thirty-six hour coding tear with bombs dropping out the sky around us, followed you in pursuit of someone across three continents for over sixty hours without sleep, watched you breathe life back into a rusty piece of shit and drive three days non-stop from Delhi to Ho Chi Minh City and I have never said this to you before, but for God’s sake _go to bed_. You look shattered. Don’t wait up for him. He’ll still be here in the morning, whether he’s woken up or not.”

Will sucks in a steady breath. He feels like he’s been hit by a freight train, and he’s pretty sure nothing less than a solid week of sleep will solve that – but he’d be better off tomorrow with a good eight hours under his belt than nothing at all. “I guess,” he mutters, scouring his eyes. “Will you wake me if – ?”

“I’m not making any promises,” Benji interrupts with a small smile. For moment Will wants to argue, but he decides it’s probably best to let it slide. He leaves Benji alone in the quiet room, interrupted only by the vague noises of Richardson’s distress; but Benji’s face is still hard and worn in the dim electric light, and it causes a deep guilt to settle in Will’s gut. He’s pushed him too hard, too far, and he’s going to have to work at earning forgiveness this time.

 

 

 

 

It’s clear when he wakes Benji has spoken to Arthur and Eames; the house is being quietly returned to its previous state of rest, doors and windows locked, creaking antique furniture trapped under heavy white dust-sheets turned a pale cream by years of use. He spends a moment after opening his eyes to pull in deep, steadying breaths, focus on the image he recalls of Ethan from Richardson’s mind, alive and waiting for him – _real_ , he attempts to convince himself, no matter how fiercely Marrakesh burns a rotting hole in his mind. _Your world is real_.

He finds Eames packing up his and Arthur’s things in the bedroom on the floor above, en route to Richardson’s room; he glances over at Will quickly, his expression friendly. “I’ve got us on a flight this afternoon,” he tells him amiably, clipping shut a compact black suitcase with his brother written all over it, “and we’ve got IDs and fresh masks in process downstairs. Do you need help packing?”

Will shakes his head. “Been living out of my case,” he replies. “Didn’t figure we’d be here for long.” He turns to ascend the stairs, but Eames stops him short with a hand on his arm.

“Will – ” Eames breaks off, lowers his voice. “He’s awake,” he says softly, and Will’s chest tightens; he stares at Eames blankly, his mind suddenly empty. He’s thought a great deal about what he wants to do to Richardson once he gets his hands on him, assured of Ethan’s safety and free from any repercussions – it’s no different than what he and his team have been forced to do a thousand times before. But now, confronted with the chance to do so, he finds he doesn’t want to take it, and this surprises him completely. “Be careful,” Eames warns, breaking his train of thought, and it’s far from patronising.

Will nods once, sharply. “Thanks,” he replies, and turns to ascend the stairs and face his demons.

Richardson still sits on the bed when Will enters, closing the door behind him with a quiet click. He’d be hard-pressed to do anything else, what with the plethora of instruments trapping his limbs; Will finds the sight of him bound and defenceless pleasing to say the least. “Congratulations, Mr. Brandt,” Richardson says after a long, pregnant pause. “It rather appears you’ve won this round.”

“There won’t be any others,” Will replies, crossing the room to check the street from the window. He doesn’t trust Richardson not to have invented some sort of signal to aid his rescue or even the IMF, but the street seems quiet, normal, mostly unoccupied. He sweeps his eyes up and down half a dozen times, and when he’s halfway happy with their safety he indulges himself a look at the man on the bed. He doesn’t look all that defeated; he looks as he always has, enigmatic, aloof, a little smug. “You don’t seem to be particularly devastated.”

Richardson shrugs. “Well, you’ll get Hunt back, I suppose, but that’s rather inconsequential in the long run, don’t you think?” Will scowls, but says nothing, tries not to rise to his own anger. “I’ve planted a little idea in your mind,” he continues quietly, eyes glittering. “You look about your tiny little world and have no idea whether what you see is real. You have to live every day of your life knowing that maybe, _maybe_ , somewhere up there – ” He glances to the ceiling, sporting a mockingly ponderous expression. “Your Ethan is alive, maybe even under torture, and waiting for you to come and save him – and of course you never will.” He smiles broadly, cold and cruel. “I think we can count that as a victory, really.”

Will takes a moment to check the rage inside his mind, curl and uncurl his fingers from fists. He wants to hear the sick crunch of skin and bones against his knuckles, give this foul man something to remember him by – “I know this is real,” he says, fighting to keep his voice calm, sounding more convinced than he feels – and Richardson’s smile only grows, one pale perfect eyebrow raised as if to ask who precisely he is trying to convince. “I _will_ get Ethan back, and you _will_ spend the last of your very short days rotting in some godforsaken little hellhole I will take great pleasure in dreaming up for you. And hey, that’s definitely enough for me.”

Richardson shrugs easily, a small smile still turning the corner of his mouth; Will itches to punch it from his face. “You have to admit it’s _neat_ , though,” he adds, sounding utterly pleased with himself. “Spreading in the mind of the brother of the man who pioneered inception – ahh,” he breathes, his expression coming alive with malice. “You didn’t know.”

Will stares across the room in thunderous silence, his stomach lurching violently. _Arthur would have told me_ , he thinks instantly, but the moment it crosses his mind he knows it isn’t true. “I trust him,” he says, and yet again his words hold far more confidence than his heart. To separate the two of them is Richardson’s goal – but as much as he knows it he still struggles to fight against it.

Richardson shrugs once more. “Of course you do,” he croons. “He’s your brother, after all.”

Will needs time – time to think, time to breathe, time to sort through the clusterfuck that has been his life for the last week and a half, and he knows Richardson will read every flitting thought that crosses his face; he cannot afford to do so here, as much as he wants to beat this man into the ground, verbally if not physically. He sucks in a breath. He has to get out.

Richardson’s still smiling as he goes. Will drags up about enough self-control to not slam the door behind him – looking like a petulant teenager won’t earn him any favours – but the moment he’s on his own in the dark, creaky hallway he breaks out into violent shivers. He’d like to say he wants to go back in the room and kick ten kinds of shit out of the guy, but if he’s truthful he doesn’t think he can stand in front of the man’s cruel smile and pale, pitiless eyes without being worked apart by that quiet, ruthless voice. He wants Ethan, wants his steady, solid warmth against his side, the familiarity of his eyes and voice and hands – and he’ll get it, he reminds himself sternly, shaking his head. He’ll get it in a matter of days.

Even as he walks back down the stairs, Richardson’s words sit in his mind, a cold, uncomfortable weight, holding a heavy truth he can’t avoid. Even if he ever gets his totem back, it will have been corrupted by another’s hand; even if Ethan stands in front of him, alive and well, there’ll be a quiet seed of doubt inside his mind.

Richardson has won.

 

 

 

 

He joins the others once he’s packed; he’d emptied his suitcase onto his neatly-made bed, taking the opportunity to fold and refold his clothes, expel the tenseness in his body through the blank, relaxing movements of his hands, akin to how he normally cleans his gun, though he didn’t trust himself with weaponry. They stand in the dining room, three indistinct-looking masks coupled with the necessary documents in neat little piles along the dark, shiny surface, and he runs his eye along them in silence, wondering as to why there aren’t more.

“We have a problem,” Arthur says quietly, his expression grim, and Will’s heart sinks. He looks to Benji, but his friend is dawdling in the corner of the room, his eyes on the floor.

“We can’t get Richardson into America,” Eames clarifies. “We haven’t the leverage to make him comply – we could threaten his life, but somehow I doubt that’s the right button to press. And seeing as we’re trying to sneak into the United States covertly, I highly doubt we can turn up to check-in with a man in handcuffs.” He licks his lips, glances nervously at Arthur. “So we were thinking – ”

“One of us needs to stay here with him,” Will finishes in a murmur, a frown creasing his forehead. An uneasy, restless fear fills his gut; as much as he’d trust these men with his life, he doesn’t think he’d trust them with Ethan’s, not now, not after all this. He can’t stay – but that isn’t his choice to make. Eames nods serenely, but Arthur looks down at the floor guiltily, avoiding his eye.

“Well, it’s got to be me, hasn’t it?” Benji says quietly, still skulking sullenly in his corner. “Will can’t stay, that’s obvious, and the two of you aren’t going to be separated for love nor money.” He looks up, his face calm and tight beyond his resolve. “I’ll stay with him.”

“Benji,” Will breathes, his chest a little tight. He wants – no, he needs Benji by him, doesn’t think he has the strength to keep going without his friend’s unconquerable, steady cheerfulness to drag him through. He may dislike the idea of himself staying with Richardson, but he likes the idea of Benji staying behind even less.

Benji shakes his head, unprepared to argue. “Pack your stuff in the van and go. You’ve got less than two hours before check-in closes. You need to move.”

Eames and Arthur quietly peel away, as ever the epitome of subtlety. Benji regards him in silence across the bright room; yesterday feels like years away, everything he said the words of a younger, stupider man, but still not foggy enough to have escaped the bite of regret. “I don’t want you to stay,” he says softly, his hand clenching and unclenching at his side. “You don’t know what he’s like. He gets inside your head.”

Benji shrugs. “I’ll manage,” he replies, and he certainly looks far more confident than Will’s felt in days. “I’ve got you this far, Will,” he adds, smiling slightly. “I know you can manage the rest on your own.”

A less than covert knock on the door announces the others’ reappearance, and Benji steps aside to let them access the masks on the table. “Any preference for who you are for the day?” Eames asks amiably as he approaches, running his fingers along the table-top. “You can be Mister Antony Stewart, the CEO of Fishing Hooks Inc., Mister John Dee, an unsuccessful pianist, or Mister Cutler Anderson, a well-meaning but incompetent ironing board salesman.”

“Whichever,” Will replies, trying not to look too amused by Eames’ idea of an alias. “Cutler sounds like a cool guy.”

They lever themselves into the cloying, unpleasant plastic (he has no idea why Benji finds using masks so particularly exciting) and pocket the various papers spewed across the table-top. Will runs his finger across the freshly-printed surface, marvelling at the penmanship; Eames and Benji certainly know their stuff. As much as the latter is grounded in years of IMF espionage training, he dreads to think how the former became such an expert.

“Don’t call yourself in until we have Ethan,” Arthur is advising Benji across the room. “I’ll let you know the moment we have him safe.”

“Good luck,” Benji replies with a half-smile, and Will can’t help the bubble of regret that blossoms in his chest.

They disappear individually across the next hour or so, one on foot, one in a cab, one in the van, dumped efficiently at the side of the road; they board alone, sit apart, never indicate they even know each other’s names. Will sits back in the ill-padded, uncomfortable chair and thinks of the last time he sat on the plane, with Ethan beside him; it feels like decades ago. He furls his fingers, thinks of the softness of Ethan’s hand, how he’d taken for granted their steady, warm weight against his own all those days ago. The engines start beneath him in a low, rumbling roar, and Will is propelled straight toward the lion’s den.

 

 

_VIENNA, VIRGINIA_

 

 

Will easily conquers the urge to shift quietly from foot to foot and dispel the slow, aching cramp in his limbs; although Ethan’s tactics tend to be more about charging in all guns blazing and less about gathering intel via old-fashioned espionage, old habits die hard, and he’s spent a lifetime’s worth of nights crouched low and motionless behind rocks, inside shrubbery, under upturned giant plastic ice-cream cones. His eyes stay glued on the entrance below, wrapped in thick darkness. His ears ring with the silence; he can hear the faraway snap-crackle of dying leaves from the plants he passed outside the perimeter, but nothing more. His watch buzzes gently against his wrist, reminding him that exactly an hour has passed since the sun fell silently from the sky. Time to move.

He runs in silence between the chunks of fallen brick and masonry, unmoved from where they had fallen years ago in the slow death of the decrepit building. A good cover; a disused site such as this would only attract attention from property surveyors and drunk kids, and the former are easily dissuaded by a wedge of cash whilst the latter only require a sharp, unpleasant and hopefully not permanent shock to scare them away. Few would cross the threshold, and one could contain all manner of projects once inside. They have almost no knowledge of its schematics save for Will’s half-remembered dream, but no time to gather more intel; their plane touched down a handful of hours ago, and they’ve already encroached on the IMF’s back yard for far too long to be sure there won’t be helicopters in the sky at any second.

He crouches behind one such block as a small troupe of grunts pass him by; well-equipped and well-trained, but nowhere near his standards. He could kill them easily, allows himself the luxury of looking them down, easily identifying their weakest points, but he can’t afford the time of hiding the bodies before the next sweep of the perimeter; they thus pass unheeded beyond his sight and he beyond theirs. He stays down for a few moments more to be sure before he springs back up and resumes his low, crouching run towards the closest door.

Although not merely propped open, it takes little effort to open, and this concerns him; no keypad, no alarm mechanism, nothing aside from a pickable keyhole at waist-height. He supposes that such an addendum to the structure would look suspicious should someone come unexpectedly to call, but takes his time checking and rechecking the frame nonetheless before he’s fairly happy to proceed. The corridor he enters is badly lit and unpleasantly damp, the smell pervasive and heavy in the air; he tucks himself into a stairwell and listens hard for approaching footsteps, his hand coming up lightly to touch his comms unit.

“Perimeter breached,” he breathes, barely a sound in the muffled, empty darkness, but enough to make him nervous.

_“Understood. Alpha comms down. How copy?”_

“Solid copy. Proceeding,” he adds, but stays hidden for a moment longer nonetheless, his thoughts churning quietly. It hasn’t escaped their attention that this whole operation could be nothing more than Richardson’s final move, as much of a trap as Marrakesh; and the ease of his entry alongside the failure of Eames’ comms did little to dispel the fear in his gut. Still, he’s inside the lion’s den now; nothing for it but to continue onwards. He steels himself once more and slips in utter silence from the shadows, flitting unheeded through innumerable, empty corridors.

He meets his first guardsman a handful of creaky, battered doors later, loitering by the nearby window, expression bored but posture clearly alert. He dispatches him quietly with a blow across the windpipe, catching him neatly before he has time to hit the ground. The glottal sound he makes sends a chill of nostalgia down his spine, and goosebumps break out along his forearms; he fervently decides against the technique for future attacks. He pats the man down for anything of use before stuffing him neatly in what shadows he can find and moving on.

There are three more waiting in the corridor beyond, confirming his suspicion he’s heading in the right direction. He removes all three without arousing the others’ suspicion, without firing a single shot, although the last does catch sight of him just as he approaches – Will treasures what he sees in the man’s eyes. The door they guard is heavier on its hinges than the others, interlaced with some sort of pneumatic support; he sees the piping along the wall and thus approaches it with a little more caution. Again, there is no visible alarm, despite his rounds of intensive checking; he peels it open in silence, hoping against hope he hasn’t triggered some little red light in a bunker not too far away, hasn’t got a thousand of Richardson’s black-clad, army-trained men hot on his heels. That said, as much as he knows it would end badly, he’s itching for a fight, his blood ignited to a quiet, thrumming simmer.

He gets one soon enough. The room beyond is filled with Richardson’s men, and they gape at Will with as much shock as he does back at them. He feels his posture shift, his bearing low; he counts half a dozen or so at least, with no idea of how readily reinforcements could become available. He hasn’t the time to incapacitate them all simultaneously. He can’t do this on his own.

Then one charges at him as the others raise their guns, and he drops down into thoughtless instinct.

The first he catches with a blow to the base of the jaw, and though he’s out of practice he feels the sick crunch as his jaw dislocates; he takes advantage of the man’s confusion and pain to deliver another punch to the top of his head, dropping him ruthlessly into unconsciousness. By now the others are firing at him, the sharp snap of gunshots cracking the air, but he grabs his attacker’s body in mid-air and uses it as a shield to catch their bullets, feeling a twinge of guilt at every jerk the man’s unconscious body makes beneath his palms. He makes it to a desk on the other side of the room in two easy strides, and the man’s body provides sufficient cover until he’s behind it; it’s a pathetic defence, old, damp, rotting, built from a flatpack in the first place, but it’s a comfort to have something to crouch behind.

He hears the familiar sound of guns being reloaded across the room alongside the crackle of static, the murmured request for reinforcements – “we’ve got him pinned,” the man says, and although Will can’t help a snarl of anger he has to admit the man’s right. He swears quietly under his breath; he can’t keep this up forever, especially not against any more men. A series of bullets slam through the cheap, worn MDF surface of the desk and he’s forced back to the floor, biting back a yell as one grazes his thigh, a hot blossom of blood swelling against his already torn and rumpled trousers.

He presses his hand to the wound, and is greeted by the unpleasant warm gush that rises up between his fingers, accompanied by the strong, tangy smell of blood; he’s had worse, but there’s already too much of his insides pumping down his leg and soaking into his grimy socks, tickling the soles of his feet. He has to move. He takes a moment to glance through the bullet-riddled surface, pinpointing his assailants in the dim, flickering light, and when he swings back up to his knees he takes three out with a bullet between the eyes, his accuracy unwavering despite the ache from his leg. He hears the muffled swears of the others but is forced to take cover once more as a second round follows the first; by some miracle he comes out unscathed, and there are only two men left now, so far as he can tell.

Just as this thought sends hot, strong sparks up and down his spine, the creak of the opening door makes his stomach sink. He listens hard for the footsteps to follow, trying to judge the size, weight, and number of his new assailants – but instead is rewarded with two quick, loud gunshots, and the wet noise of two bodies slapping unceremoniously onto the concrete floor.

He looks up over the desk, and Eames smiles back down at him.

“I know, I know, you had it covered,” he says, and reaches down to help him to his feet, eyes instantly flickering to the seeping wound on Will’s leg. “Sorry for the delay, got spotted by the signal box. Can you walk on that?”

Will nods once, testing and flexing the muscle beneath his weight. It needs bandaging, and badly – but his clothes are too dirty to tear, and he has nothing else. “Check for an aid pack,” he murmurs, head feeling a little light, but Eames is already pressing a roll of cloth into his hand.

“Your brother’s a paranoid idiot sometimes, but at least this’ll finally come in handy.” Eames backs off to the door to give him privacy, and Will tears his trouser-leg away quickly to get the bandage on as well as he can manage, given the circumstances. “I killed their comms system on my way in, but the marvellous thing about gunshots is you don’t have to be stood next door to hear them. I suggest we make a move.”

There’s only one door in the room save for the one they entered by, and Will tugs it open, unconcerned of any alarms. Eames is right in that respect; any secrecy they had was blown by the first round of bullets. None blare out within their hearing, and together they step into the dark-walled corridor, pervaded with the same unpleasant damp as elsewhere in the complex. Each step he takes is accompanied by a dull thrum of pain from his thigh, and though it’s heavily clamped under the bandage he really needs to keep it still to stop the bleeding – but he can’t stop, not now, not so close, not from something so trivial in the face of everything he’s done. He’s well aware that Eames could manage without him – would probably do better without him, given his current state – but he’s damned if he’s going to abandon Ethan now.

The first door they find yields a bathroom, the second a storage cupboard which they pilfer quickly, efficiently, though take little, choosing to destroy the majority and deny the enemy rather than weigh themselves down. The third and final door leads to an anteroom of white-walled concrete and trays of sharp, clean instruments Will does not like the look of. The room has recently been abandoned; computer terminals litter the floor, their screens cracked, their insides spewed haphazardly across the concrete. The destruction is efficient but hasty; Will runs his eyes across the snapped sheets of plastic glittering in the electric light, wondering whether Benji will be able to get anything from them.

Eames’ signalling catches his eye; he’s asking whether to go for the opposite door in Arthur’s – Will and Arthur’s – code. Will looks across at it silently, his throat dry, his tongue large and clunky in his mouth. Everything that’s got him to this point seems to fizzle away, dry up in the face of concrete, truthful inevitability; Ethan could lie dead through that door, and Will’s gut clenches at the thought of it. There’s no way he can handle a sight like that.

A shout in the corridor makes him jump; the backup’s arrived, and they’re pinned. Eames sends him a long look before crossing the room to tug open the anteroom’s door; the moment he looks inside he sucks in a quiet, startled breath. Will doesn’t need to ask to know Ethan lies beyond, but he can’t bring himself to look at Eames’ eyes, to discover whether they hold sympathy or relief. Will shoulders past him roughly, the roar in his ears returning in full force – and his knees nearly buckle beneath him at the sight that greets him, Ethan sleeping quietly on the rickety cot Will suddenly recognises sharply from his dream, his expression tight and pained but peaceful, the slow rise and fall of his chest unmistakeable in the harsh white light.

Eames presses a hand on his shoulder; Will barely recognises the gesture. He says something about calling an ambulance, clearing a route through Richardson’s men to get them out, but Will hardly hears him over the low thrum of static ringing in his ears. There’s a sick, hot rush of blood from his leg, the bandage unravelling, the corners of his eyes bursting bright with black stars, and he wrestles furiously with unconsciousness, keeping his eyes fixed on Ethan’s face. He crosses the room in three quick steps and drops down to his knees, curling his hand around Ethan’s wrist, feeling his pulse thrum beneath the pads of his fingers.

He can’t read Ethan’s face in the dim, electric light, can’t know for sure without being able to see Ethan’s eyes, but something inside him unwinds nonetheless. He runs his fingers along the bright marks of Ethan’s veins and feels safe.

 

 

 

 

Will wakes to the smell of a hospital and calm, strong fingers combing through his grimy hair. Long fingers, thick calluses, fingernails bitten to the quick. They pause the moment he comes round, recognising the change in his pulse; Will’s embarrassed to say it definitely jumps a beat. He lets his eyes stay shut a moment more, feels the cool press of the bedsheet against his cheek, the numbness in his thigh from an overeager dose of morphine, the way his stomach is crunched and cramped from how he’s lain in the chair by Ethan’s bed, his torso slipping onto the bed itself as he slept.

He raises his head as slowly as he can. The hand resting on his scalp slips down against his cheek, and Will looks up to Ethan’s eyes.

“Hey,” Ethan says, smiling.

Will takes a moment to drink him in, every feature, every facet, but even as his eyes track across his face he feels himself relax, feels every inch of him succumb to relief.

This is Ethan, solid and real in the light of day. He is home.


	6. Chapter 6

They come for him when Ethan falls asleep once more; they could have taken him before, but he suspects there might be someone on his side stood on the other side of the door, blocking their way. He gets the full treatment, solid handcuffs reaching up to his elbows, thick matted sacking pressed against his face, sweet with a hint of something he doesn’t recognise but puts him under in moments.

He wakes again to a concrete room, bound to a metal chair, and it reminds him so sharply of Croatia he panics for a moment that he never left that cold, damp room – but there is a wall of black glass before him he doesn’t recognise, and a characteristic IMF surveillance camera bleeping in the crook of a nearby wall. He lets out a long, slow breath, hoping Ethan stays soundly asleep until he can return but doubting it nonetheless. Explaining himself might be more than a little difficult.

His first visitor is someone he doesn’t recognise, but the stranger does him the courtesy of feeding him something lukewarm and brown he probably got from the IMF’s canteen – normally he’d be more than a little offended at being treated like some goddamn invalid, but his stomach is growling fiercely and the hole in his leg is drumming a hot rhythm against his thigh, further provoked by his own hunger. They have obviously secreted some medication inside the unrecognisable slop, as the pain dulls slightly after he eats; he’s more than a little thankful, sitting back a little more comfortably in the sharp, metal chair.

Jane comes next, looking haggard and worn but wonderfully bright nonetheless, her face barely able to contain the smile that spreads across it once she enters the room. They hug somewhat awkwardly, mainly because he’s still handcuffed to a chair. “It’s good to see you,” he says quietly, and it surprises him how much it catches in his throat, thicker and heavier than he thought it would be. She smiles, gently touching his cheek before moving behind him to free him from his cuffs; he straightens slowly, taking his time, working each knot and cramp out of his muscles. “They’re letting me go?”

Her expression darkens. “They are if I have anything to say about it,” she replies, her tone murderous. “Benji rang in with Richardson explaining the whole damn thing, but they still pulled you in for questioning against my orders. Fucking amateurs.”

She looks him over in silence; she’s definitely seen him worse, but there’s some sadness in her eyes he doesn’t recognise. “Let me guess,” he says with a grin, trying to lighten the mood, “hospital?”

She smiles sadly. “Somehow, I don’t think that’ll cut it this time.” She runs a hand along his jaw, taps the bottom of his chin. “I think you need – ”

“A vacation?” he interrupts, eyebrow raised; he’s expecting a quiet retirement request to land on his desk the moment he walks free, anyway.

“I was going to say Ethan, actually,” she replies, smiling wryly. “But perhaps both would be good. He’s still at the hospital – I’ll drive you.”

There’s a conspicuously suited man loitering outside of Ethan’s ward, but he’s dismissed by a single, cool glance from Jane as they approach him along the shiny, soap-slicked floor. He glances between the blinds the instant they arrive, but finds him still firmly unconscious; he huffs out a small sigh, more than a little relieved. “Have the doctors checked your leg?”

“Yes ma’am,” he replies, rolling his eyes with a grin. “It’ll scar, but not badly. It’s hardly my first.”

She makes a brief, low noise of disapproval from between pursed lips, her eyes narrowed, but eventually her expression softens. “Your brother rang,” she adds in a quieter tone, and Will’s stomach clenches momentarily. “The IMF might be willing to grant you some immunity, but he and his companion are hardly saints. He told me to say they took the first plane home – I’m guessing you know what that means.”

Will nods sharply, his expression darkening. So like the IMF to start a witch-hunt for the wrong goddamn guy; Arthur shouldn’t have to run. Through the window Ethan sleeps soundly on, and though she lingers by his side a while longer Jane eventually says a quiet goodbye to let them be alone. He sits beside him in silence, unable to shake the feeling that at some time, somewhere, he’s going to have to choose between legal and illegal, Arthur and Ethan – and that’s not a choice he’s going to be able to make.

 

 

 

 

He guesses he has Jane to thank for the wide berth the IMF gives them in the week that follows. The only agent he sees is Benji, who arrives a few days after them, Richardson in tow; the latter gets snapped up by the IMF pretty quickly, or at least from what he can tell. It seems that anyone who knew Will in the slightest was certain that he was innocent from the start; their only issue was that those in command didn’t know Will at all.

Benji turns up in Ethan’s hospital room alone, looking well in need of a holiday but otherwise as chipper as he’s ever been. “Had us worried there for a minute,” he tells Ethan cheerily, smacking him on the shoulder; Ethan sends him a long look under a raised eyebrow, but he’s smiling nonetheless.

They spend the next few days alone, just talking. Will tells him everything he’s wanted to all the time they’ve been apart; about the death of his parents, and the years that followed before he joined the IMF; about his brother and Eames, living together in Mombasa, what Richardson had said about inception and Arthur’s part in it; about the events of the last week and a half, and how much he’s ashamed it happened at all. In return, Ethan tells him the few facts that he (or anyone, for that matter) doesn’t know about Ethan Hunt; that he did have a kid sister, but she died when he was twenty-two; that his mother had been in the IMF before him, and he’d lived with his grandparents until he was four and she retired for good; that before he’d met Will in Moscow he’d visited Julia in Seattle every Friday night when he was home, watched her from afar, let it destroy him quietly, piece by piece.

The hospital sends Ethan home after no more than a week in hospital, with strict instructions for some serious R&R at home; Will would protest, but he’s learnt from experience it’s a damn tough job getting Ethan to stay in a hospital bed. Ethan’s injuries extend to a fading bruise across his throat and a freckling of pockmarks along his forearms from sedation and nothing more. Besides, Will’s been categorically suspended from duty, and at least when he’s home he’ll be able to keep an eye on Ethan without the stench of antiseptic rotting his nostrils.

The house feels weird when he re-enters it, flicking on lights in dead rooms to counteract the dark pull of the dying light outside. He feels as if it should have changed somehow to mark everything he’s been through, everything he’s done – but it hasn’t. He’s been gone no more than a couple weeks, and the world hasn’t stopped for him.

“Nothing stolen,” Ethan confirms with a grin, dumping his bag as he walks through the living room door. Will leans against the lintel and watches him in silence; he thinks that he looks both solid and fragile at once, his mouth pale and drawn but his eyes still bright and alive. “No mail, other than bills to pay. No messages, other than from my mother. We lead such interesting lives.” He looks across when Will says nothing, senses that he’s trapped in his own head, thoughts heavy with regret. “Hey,” Ethan says softly, standing beside him. He puts a hand on Will’s shoulder, stares hard into his eyes. “You did it. We’re home.”

Ethan kisses him, soft and slow, his hands warm and steady at Will’s waist, everything he’d missed, everything he remembers. He lets his arms fall to his sides, feels the way Ethan’s mouth curves into a smile against his.

They call out for dinner, Will reluctant to cook and Ethan thoroughly fed up with crappy hospital food. They eat their pizza in silence, propped up at either end of the sofa, their legs from the knees down entwined. Will thinks of Arthur, no doubt soundly asleep half a world away, of what Richardson had said in Tangiers, and how little he knows the man his brother’s become. He might get the chance to, now, he realises, and it fills him with hope, bright and sharp like a beacon.

He doesn’t notice Ethan move, but when Will looks up he stands before him, shoulders framed by the dim electric light, one hand extended down. Will takes it, lets himself be pulled up onto his feet, a dull thrum of pain from where he lets too much weight slide onto his bad leg; then Ethan curls his fingers into his belt loops and pulls him in close to kiss him hard, eyes sliding shut. He swallows back against a moan, shudders slightly in the still, quiet air. He’s missed this.

Ethan undresses him quickly, methodically once they’re inside their bedroom, taking care to check each limb for scars both old and new, avoid the bruise-rimmed bandage wrapped around his thigh. He pauses once he’s worked Will’s t-shirt free, running his fingers along the empty line his totem used to occupy. Ethan smiles wryly. “Arthur,” he says slowly, eyebrow raised. “Your brother Arthur.”

Will shrugs, grinning. “I told you he wasn’t competition,” he replies, and Ethan rolls his eyes.

He pushes Will towards the bed and strips off his own clothes without ceremony, dropping lube and a condom next to him in silence before sitting down beside him, resuming the warm press of his mouth to Will’s throat, shoulders, chest. Will regards the latter item out of the corner of his eye, confused – he’s hardly spent the last week roaming around the world bedding every man he lays his eyes on. The only people he’s been with are Benji, his brother and his partner, for fuck’s sake. And Ethan –

His blood chills. They have no idea what Richardson could have done to him; the blood results from the lab still aren’t back. His fingers tighten against Ethan’s shoulder, his mind suddenly bright with fear. “Stop thinking, Will,” Ethan admonishes quietly, and kisses each closed eyelid. “I’m just being paranoid. You know I’ll be okay.”

Will looks at him, and he’s only half-surprised to find that he believes him.

He lets Ethan guide him onto the bed properly, each kiss slightly harder, hotter, more desperate than the last. Their hips slide snugly against each other and Will lets loose a gasp, quick, hot, matching the snap of pleasure that ricochets up his spine. Ethan pushes the cool tube into his hand, and he takes a minute to even realise what it means; he’s too caught up in tasting the curve of Ethan’s neck, catching the muscle between neck and shoulder in his teeth, pressing his fingers into the sweat gathering at the base of Ethan’s spine.

Will shakes his head, gestures down at his wounded thigh. “Can’t take the weight,” he mutters, voice hoarse and a little rough.

Ethan sits back on his haunches, pulling in deep, thick breaths, his sharp eyes bright, his pupils blown. He licks his lips absently, his fingers beating an odd rhythm against Will’s wounded thigh, just below the bandage line. He takes a moment to think, and Will spends the time drinking the sight of him in, every muscle, every notch and bump marking a litany of battles, a massed web of scars. His hair’s growing long again, hanging loose across his eyes. He’s perfect.

“Okay,” Ethan says finally, and reaches for the tube himself. Will closes his eyes and opens his legs, crooking them at the knee; he lets a slow, filthy smile spread across his face as he hears the way the sight makes Ethan’s breath catch. When cold, slick hands catch hold of his calves they’re shaking ever so slightly – hands unmoved in combat, in the face of a thousand enemies, trembling and tight against his skin and all because of him.

He’s steadier once he starts working Will open, each press of his fingers slowly more stable, more sure, focused on the task he’s taken. Will’s toes curl tight against the bedsheets, his back breaking out in sweat, his breath escaping in tight, hot pants. He avoids Will’s prostate with medical precision, fully aware both of how much Will needs it but also of how careless it will make him be; Ethan’s a sucker for the shocked, helpless noises Will makes every time he succumbs to pleasure, every time Ethan touches him just where Will needs him to. This isn’t an exercise in control, but Ethan has to be careful nonetheless; they’re both battered and scarred, damaged both inside and out. They’ve learnt the hard way how a hasty fuck after a week’s worth of fighting can make things go from bad to worse.

When he feels Will’s ready he reaches down for a kiss, curls the tips of his fingers gently against Will’s prostate, and the wrangled, desperate noise Will makes is hardly human. Ethan smiles as Will sucks in hot, quick breaths, and it almost looks malicious in the dim light. “Asshole,” Will gasps, and then chokes on a moan as he does it again. “Christ, _Ethan_.” He feels the shudder run through Ethan’s body, the way his hand tightens and releases from where it rests against his hipbone. Like he said, he’s a sucker for Will’s torn, shocked voice, and they both know it.

He takes a moment to take in thick gulps of air as Ethan pulls back for the condom, has to close his eyes once he sees Ethan’s fingers close around it, knowing that the sight of it alone is more than he can handle. He feels the press of Ethan’s fingers against his sternum, and they trail warm, soft lines up and down his chest, feather-light, just touching, just feeling. It settles something hot and hard inside Will’s chest, and he shivers.

He’s long since passed the point of being ready, approaching far too fucking long; he arches his hips up, trying to encourage the touch, and is rewarded by a sharp sting of pain from his thigh. He bites back a curse, hoping he hasn’t opened up his stitches yet again. But Ethan’s taken the hint; he has a warm, steady hand on each leg once more, sliding him down the mattress on the crisp, rasping sheets sticking to his sweaty back, working out a position to take the weight off of Will’s thigh. Will keeps his eyes tight shut, curls his fingers roughly round the pillow abandoned to his side, uses it as a brace of sorts. Then Ethan pushes inside him, and the blood in his ears kicks up to a long, low roar.

He lies there in silence, utterly still save for the flimsy, useless breaths he pulls into his chest, his head dizzy and light and thick and full. His skin feels like a barrier, as if body and mind are pushing up against it, desperate to get out, slice through it. He opens his eyes, and Ethan stares back down at him, hardly breathing, his eyes both sharp and glassy, focused and far away. Will frees an arm from the death grip on the pillow beside him, touches the side of Ethan’s face, and Ethan shudders and moans.

Ethan moves. He starts out slow and steady, gentle, knowing how each new push-and-pull works him inside Will that little bit further, how the pleasure comes to him laced with an uncomfortable sting. A flush twines its way up Ethan’s chest, along his neck, settles high against his cheeks, and each push wrings a noise from him, not quite a grunt but rough and raw nonetheless, and Will longs to press his mouth to Ethan’s, drink each little one in, catch and hold them in the back of his throat. Ethan leans down, touches his forehead to Will’s shoulder, and it sits there like a dead weight, a perfect counterpoint to Will’s heart, thumping so hard in his chest he feels as if it will break free. Will presses his mouth onto the curve of Ethan’s scalp, breathes in the sweat from his hair, and it makes him dizzy. Ethan’s fingers furl and unfurl from where they rest, one at his hip, the other hot and hard against his thigh, hooking his good leg up around Ethan’s waist.

They’re long beyond slow and steady now. Ethan’s broken free of care, of restraint, is immersed firmly in his own mind and Will’s, relentless and strong. Will can hardly hear the sounds he’s making over the roar in his ears but he knows each one of them is wracked, raw, wrenched free from his mouth and out onto Ethan’s skin as if it belongs to him, doesn’t belong inside Will’s chest at all. He can feel himself coming; can feel how it builds from the balls of his feet, the backs of his arms, under his fingernails, and rolling up through him, rebounding up and down his spine, hot and thick and fast.

He hasn’t the breath to warn Ethan, though he doubts he’s entirely unaware. He digs his fingers into his shoulders and shakes apart.

He lies in a daze as Ethan’s tipped over the edge not long after, as he separates their sweat-sticky bodies, cleans them up as best he can. Will’s just about able to breathe again when he rejoins him, the dip in the mattress feeling foggy, far away; he feels grounded, like he’s spent years and years up in the air and he’s finally landed back down.

“You’re thinking,” Ethan says dryly, and the pleasantly rough edge to his voice makes Will shiver. “I thought I’d got you past that.”

He touches the solid line of Ethan’s cheekbone, thinking of the scar that graces Richardson’s face, thinking of the way Ethan’s had looked mere moments ago, flushed and hot with pleasure. “Just seems a little too good to be true,” he says quietly.

Ethan stares at him for a long while, silent, enigmatic. “You said Arthur told you you’d be able to tell,” he says finally, tone soft. “So look, and tell me what you see.”

So Will looks. Slowly, surely, a smile spreads across his face, soft and warm. “You,” he breathes, and Ethan’s smile is brighter than the sun.

 

 

 

 

Governor Matheson is a portly, balding man with a weedy, pathetic moustache, and he harks back to a time long gone by. He has a bigoted, stupid little mind, the arrogance to match it and, worst of all, the authority to implement whatever he damn well pleases. Not for the first time, Will finds himself sat on the other side of the man’s tall, mahogany desk, running his eye across the surface, heavily embellished with a thousand praises of his success in medals, photographs, awards. There’s a low feeling of fury curling round his gut.

“You maintain you are unable to account for why this Richardson targeted you,” he rumbles in his thick, Texan accent, setting Will’s teeth on edge.

“Yes, sir,” he replies as calmly as he can, fighting down the urge to fidget. He’s hardly going to admit that it stemmed from running a dreamsharing operation with his kid brother ten years ago, no matter what the man might have heard.

“Hrm,” Matheson mutters on a sigh, his thick, bushy eyebrow dropping further down his fat forehead. Will stares out at the window behind him through the slatted blinds, bored and inattentive. He thinks of Ethan, holed up alone in their home, not ten minutes away and probably going stir-crazy despite the fact he only got discharged a day and a half ago; R&R with Ethan Hunt is always an amusing experience. He scratches absently at his thigh, holding back a wince at the involuntary press against his bandages. “It says here you believe you behaved according to the correct practice,” he continues, not looking up from his report. Will says nothing, waiting for the blow he knows is coming. “You hardly followed the regulations recommended in the IMF’s field training.”

 _You would have arrested me where I stood had I contacted you_ , he thinks to himself, but says, “I adapted them as necessary. I got my fellow agent out.”

Matheson looks at him once more; his eyes are almost perfectly blue, and possess no element of kindness he can find. “And you would have behaved the same had it been any other agent,” he adds, casting his eye back down at the papers lying on his desk. “Had it been Carter, Dunn, Branson, Jacobi...”

Will feels his chest clench, and struggles to keep his tone calm. “Sir?”

Matheson sighs, rolling his eyes. “Did the fact you’re fucking Hunt cause your _adaptation_ of the rules, Brandt? You’re usually so...” He pauses, licks his lips, and settles on “ _steadfast_.”

The rage mounting in his chest is an inch away from freedom. He feels his hands curling into fists. “No, sir,” he spits, barely able to keep the shake from his voice.

Matheson lets out a long, theatrical sigh, lets the report flutter free from between his fingers. “I’m disappointed you didn’t help us bring in your brother, though. The charges against his name are enough to make you blush.” He looks up at Will once more, dispassionate and cold. “You were admitted to this division on the belief that your connection with him had been terminated, Brandt.” He places his elbows on the tabletop, rests his chin on pointed fingertips. “But I’m not an unfair man; I’m willing to offer you a deal, put the past week and a half behind you. You give us what we want on Arthur, or this – ” He glances down at his desk, shifts aside a piece of paper. “ – Eames character, and we wipe your slate clean. You keep your job, we’ll say nothing of your sordid affair with Hunt, and we get the man we want. Sound fair?”

Will draws back his hand and punches him securely in the face.

 

 

 

 

Although every single instinct in him screams at him to stay, Arthur runs. With Eames at his side they can’t possibly afford capture, not in the US, not with the IMF now tight on their backs; this is an organisation which can put them in a deep, dark room for years without trials or questioning, can choose to feed or free them as they wish. Will insists they’re the good guys, but Arthur has always believed that no one should have that power. His brother is home, safe, and as much as Arthur wants to stay by his side he wants – needs – to make sure Eames is safe more.

They touch down in Mombasa the day after they leave Will. Arthur makes a call to Jane, whom Will had told him he could trust, and then they sink into a well-deserved slumber, spend the week lounging around in as few clothes as possible and spending more time in bed than out of it. Dom rings after a handful of days, and Arthur’s gut clenches with guilt – he’d entirely forgotten he’d said he’d come visit, hadn’t said anything to him before their hasty and untimely retreat back to Kenya.

 _“My guy on the inside said they were looking for you,”_ Dom says quietly; Arthur can hear the familiar shrieks of kids playing not too far away, and guesses Dom is hiding the other side of his bedroom door. _“I thought you’d run.”_

“I’m sorry,” Arthur says, and means it. “I wanted to see you.”  


_“Keep yourself safe. We’ll handle it. I’ll see you soon.”_

Eames says nothing when he puts down the phone, just pulls him into a brief, one-armed hug. “I was thinking curry for dinner,” he says as he walks into the kitchen, tone neutral, and the evening continues like any other; the option to discuss it is always there, but only at a time and in a manner of Arthur’s choosing. It’s moments like this Arthur realises how lucky he is with Eames.

He lets the week go by before he worries about Will’s safety once more. It’s a somewhat unfamiliar sensation, worrying about his big brother, one that stems deeply back to when they’d worked side by side over a decade ago; it feels weird to have it back again, sinking over him like a second layer of skin, somehow always there even when he’s on the other side of the world. To his surprise, he finds he doesn’t mind.

A week and a half after they left the USA, Eames gives him a knowing look and presses the phone into his hand. “To give us both some peace and quiet,” he says a little archly, though his mouth is unmistakeably curved in amusement. “I’m pretty sure they can hear you worrying from Nairobi.” He takes it onto the veranda to call, tipping his head up toward the early evening sky, thick and pungent with the smell of spilled rain; it’s been a thoroughly miserable day. Eames has been delighted by it; the man is English, after all.

 _“Hunt,”_ is the answer he gets after two rings, and for a second it throws him; he had expected Will to answer.

“Is Brandt there?”

 _“He’s in a meeting,”_ Ethan replies, and even through the terrible, crackling line he catches the sour note to his words. There’s a pause, and then he adds, _“This is Arthur, isn’t it?”_

Arthur panics – he almost hangs up until he remembers who he’s talking to, and lets out a shaky, chuckling breath. “Is my brother idiotic enough to have caller ID?”

Ethan laughs. _“No. Call it a lucky guess. He’s been worrying about you all week. I can tell him you called if you want.”_

“Yeah, that’d be good.” He pauses for a moment, drumming his fingers on the rail. “Can you – is he – is he okay?”

Ethan doesn’t reply for a long while. _“I caught him counting the tiles on the bathroom wall one night,”_ he says finally. _“And the way he looks at me sometimes, like he can’t believe...”_

Arthur listens to him trail off, his heart heavy. “He told you everything, right?”

 _“Yeah.”_ There’s a brief, hot burst of static Arthur translates as a sigh. _“I think he’ll_ be _okay. It’s just going to take a while.”_

“Thanks,” Arthur replies. He can’t help but agree. “Listen, tell him I rang and I’ll try him later. I’ve got to go.”

_“Okay. I’m not going anywhere. Will you answer this number?”_

“Yes,” Arthur says, and hangs up. He stares inattentively out into the city, his fingers beating an irregular tattoo against the twisted metal rail.

Eames slinks onto the balcony beside him, his mouth quirked in evident amusement. “Conspiring with the missus,” he says, grinning. “You are the most evil kind of sibling.”

Arthur smiles; it feels tight and heavy on his face, but with each breath he pulls in he feels more relaxed, free. He studies the lines of Eames’ face, takes him by the hand and feels the steady, warm pulse beneath his fingertips. He isn’t sure what he’d expected – to ring and find out his brother had just _got over it_ seems unlikely at best. He is, however, now certain he’s done the right thing. Will is safe with Ethan, and he has Eames, just as he always has, just as he always will.

 

 

 

 

Will’s limping by the time he stomps up the path to their front door; he’s been walking too far, too fast, too hard, at first forgetting and then ignoring the hole in his thigh. He’s pretty sure he’s ripped his stitches; Ethan’ll chew him out over it, and the realisation does invoke a tiny glimmer of guilt. He unlocks the door, checks for mail (none), checks for messages (none) and walks through to the living room where Ethan lies across their ridiculously large sofa, still looking a little weary but bored out of his mind.

“That bad?” Ethan says on catching sight of him. Will drops down onto the sofa next to him, resisting the urge to curl up close as he can get. Ethan grabs his wrist, runs his thumb over the swollen, bloodied knuckles on his right hand, raising his eyebrow in obvious surprise.

“Let’s just say I’m pretty sure I just resigned,” Will mutters, closing his eyes and scouring his face with his free hand, wincing as he brushes over the new, pinkish bruise blooming on his temple.

He sounds a lot stronger than he feels; inside he’s drowning in worry. He’s disliked the IMF for a long time now, the way they’ve treated him, Ethan, others he’s known and cared for – but he knows Ethan can’t push it aside as easily as him. Ethan lives for the next mission, revels in putting his life on the line, gets a hit out of doing stupid, ridiculous things – and the IMF provides him with all this. Working as an agent provides him with all this.

Will’s stomach clenches tight. He knows full well he’ll never give this up for him.

“He asked you for Arthur, didn’t he?” Ethan says, and Will realises they’ve been sat in silence, Will sunk gloomily inside his own thoughts. It still surprises him how easy Ethan finds it to read him. Will nods. “Then he’s an asshole,” Ethan continues, still gently running his thumb along Will’s new wounds. “He deserves everything he got.”

Ethan glances down at Will’s leg, and Will’s amused to see the annoyance he’d predicted flickering over his face at the sight of blood seeping through his badly-pressed suit. “I know,” Will sighs, rolling his eyes, “I’m an idiot.”

Ethan’s mouth quirks in a smile, and he gets to his feet. “Take those off,” he says, and Will sends him a hot look on a filthy grin. “Don’t get any ideas,” he adds as he leaves the room. “I sincerely doubt you’re going to enjoy this.”

He returns with their aid kit in one hand and a bag of ice for Will’s hand in the other. He lays the latter over Will’s swollen knuckles before crouching beside Will’s naked leg, and begins to gently uncurl the bloodied bandage. His hand falls on top of Ethan’s head; he spreads his fingers, tugs them through the knotted mess slowly, more than a little content. He works in silence, pausing only to check his progress or ask Will if he needs something more to take the pain from his leg. He can’t even count the number of times Ethan’s done this for him, sat down beside him after some battle or another and dressed and redressed his wounds, hands always sure and steady, always full of care.

“I was thinking of taking a vacation myself, if I’m honest,” Ethan says as he wipes his hands clean of Will’s blood on a ragged, disused towel they keep in the kitchen for this exact purpose. “A proper one, without the IMF on our backs.”

Will looks down at him in silence, more than a little thunderstruck. In all the years he’s known him, Ethan Hunt has never, ever wanted to take a holiday, never done anything than live and breathe the IMF – other than with Julia. His gut clenches tightly at the thought. “Yeah?” he says quietly, pulse thrumming a low roar.

“Yeah,” Ethan reiterates, smiling, and it’s perfect. He’s perfect. Will’s heart hits his throat. “I hear Mombasa’s pretty nice this time of year.”


End file.
